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A review by noodlebooknook
Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
5.0
What a beautifully written book.
This book was a wild ride but I absolutely loved it!
This book follows a young girl from India that learns a secret after her grandfathers passing that rocks her whole world and forces her in a journey to America to investigate, while leading a well off fiancé from a well off family to deal with some crazy things himself. It follows her family and his family and what it means to love, what it means to have baggage and what it means to have flaws.
It touches on so many deep themes from the class delegation in India during the early 2000s, the racism of America post 9/11, what ancestry means for you, grief from mourning the death of someone you love and more grief with the death of that person’s memory from learning about their baggage how you can still grieve and love them despite their flaws. It’s about family, it’s about everything.
The prose of this book is beautiful and I really enjoyed each perspective it gave from each character all of which felt so real and so human because of their flaws.
It got a little slow for me in the middle only because I just couldn’t tell where this story was going to end up but in the end it made a lot of sense.
I laughed, I cried, I gasped, and I was furious the full range of emotions I felt during this book was amazing and I cannot believe I haven’t heard about this book, it deserves a lot more hype, I look forward to reading the rest of the authors work in the future!
This book was a wild ride but I absolutely loved it!
This book follows a young girl from India that learns a secret after her grandfathers passing that rocks her whole world and forces her in a journey to America to investigate, while leading a well off fiancé from a well off family to deal with some crazy things himself. It follows her family and his family and what it means to love, what it means to have baggage and what it means to have flaws.
It touches on so many deep themes from the class delegation in India during the early 2000s, the racism of America post 9/11, what ancestry means for you, grief from mourning the death of someone you love and more grief with the death of that person’s memory from learning about their baggage how you can still grieve and love them despite their flaws. It’s about family, it’s about everything.
The prose of this book is beautiful and I really enjoyed each perspective it gave from each character all of which felt so real and so human because of their flaws.
It got a little slow for me in the middle only because I just couldn’t tell where this story was going to end up but in the end it made a lot of sense.
I laughed, I cried, I gasped, and I was furious the full range of emotions I felt during this book was amazing and I cannot believe I haven’t heard about this book, it deserves a lot more hype, I look forward to reading the rest of the authors work in the future!