sushi__g 's review for:

Dava Shastri's Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti

2.75

emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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The plot of this book had a lot of potential. Rich, self-made woman who wants to die on her own terms but needs to reconcile her past with her present. However, the execution is middling at best and clumsy at worst. Ramisetti's prose is not bad, especially for a debut, but her characters feel like caricatures and not a single one had any depth, including the matriarch main character. They all felt like they'd been assigned tropes to fulfil - the gay son, the wayward youngest child, the daughter who is supposed to take over from Dava, and Dava herself is pigeonholed into the stoic-but-loving-but-also-has-skeletons character. The attempts to shoehorn the characters' 'Indianness' and 'Americanness' were shallow and contrived, and it felt like the book would've been better off sticking to a single setting culturally instead of not doing justice to either context. Throughout the book, every time the Shastri family interacted, I kept thing - "Do real people really talk this way?" The book also fails at keeping the reader engaged in the tension and suspense of Dava's life - we really have no stakes to look forward to and frankly, care about her life or her family. Its not all bad, and it reminded me of 90s Bollywood family dramas minus the misogyny and dancing. But the book never lives up to its potential, and I finished it feeling empty.