A review by pisceslj
Dava Shastri's Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti

2.0

It’s not a bad book, but it also makes me question book clubs. It’s one of those books with an unlikeable main character that you find out more about as you go, their history, their loves and losses, their motivations. I just cared less and less the more I found out about Dava, and her family. I’m sick of the trope I keep reading and watching on tv that a successful, driven woman must be a bad mom or emotionally unavailable to loved ones. Just because a parent (mom or dad) misses time with their kids for work doesn’t automatically mean that they don’t have good quality time. But Dava goes out of her way to treat her family like extensions of herself.

I love complicated characters and especially women (Olive Kittridge is the perfect example) but Dava and her story is not all that unique or complicated. The author lost me when a young Dava was reading the biography of Rockefeller and said out loud I want to be the next Rockefeller, I want my name to be a legend, and my legacy to be carried on by children I didn’t particularly want to have.