A review by jnvreads
Marriage and Masti by Nisha Sharma

3.0

Marriage & Masti by Nisha Sharma - Rating: 3/5⭐️

Veera Mathur’s life is in limbo. She’s the last of her friends to be single, feeling left out as the man that she loves is engaged to another woman. And the cherry on top? Her father fired her from their family company. Just when it can’t get worse, Veera and her twin sister end up in a ship wreck that loses all of their credit cards and identification. Leaving her to turn to Deepak Datta, her closest guy friend who just woke up to his own disaster of his fiancé uploading a breakup video to her followers before telling him and struggling to become CEO of his family’s company. As Deepak comes to Veera’s rescue, too many drinks leads to a ceremonial marriage that just might be the solution to their careers. The line between their fake marriage blending into their real feelings. 

LIKES:

👍🏾 The book mainly tackles the complicated feeling of being the last person in your friend group to be single and how there can be different kinds of strength in women and the alienation that can come with it. 

👍🏾 Learning more about traditional Indian customs especially surrounding the marriage route this time. My favorite probably was the fasting tradition. I still love the authenticity that Nisha Sharma holds in her writing those aspects because she doesn’t overly explain them. 

DISLIKES:

👎🏾 One huge qualm I have with friends to lovers (why I usually don’t read them) is that it is almost always one huge miscommunication trope. You go into it already knowing that they obviously have feelings for each other and have to hear it almost the whole time. It just isn’t a trope that adds the angst that comes with romance books and always falls flat for me in that area. This book was no exception. 

👎🏾 I was honestly so excited for Veera and Deepak’s book after their glimpses in the other books. But they didn’t hold the same energy that I remember. Their conflicts weren’t as big as I perceived them to really be, except the career ones. Deepak’s engagement didn’t even really make sense. Not only that but the fake marriage wasn’t fully developed into a problem, Veera’s sister didn’t really add anything to the story, and Veera’s dad’s jealousy wasn’t fully fleshed out. There was so much potential in each but they just didn’t hit all the way. Again mostly due to the miscommunication with the whole group. 

Overall, I have read all of the If Shakespeare Was an Auntie interconnected series since Dr. Dil first came out. This one was my least favorite out of all of them, but still held a lot of the same elements I’ve liked from the previous two. Even though I didn’t like this one as much with the less fleshed out miscommunication writing, I’m honestly so sad to leave this group of friends.