Tag: #romance

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No Shame, Only Romance: Recommendation of Wrong to Need You

Tulip Majumdar

Every time I’m in a new city, I make it a point to visit at least one local bookstore. If I’m lucky, I get to check out a few independent stores, like The Ripped Bodice right outside of Los Angeles or Rhino Booksellers in Nashville. And if I’m there for a few days, I will always, without fail, end up at a Barnes & Noble.

Something that I’ve noticed at nearly every single Barnes & Noble location that I’ve visited is that a certain section is consistently empty. Fiction is always bumping, Starbucks is very nearly packed to the brim with people stealing wifi and sometimes drinking overpriced beverages, and even the graphic novels have a steady stream of visitors thanks to our superhero-saturated culture. But the one section that I rarely ever see readers in is the romance section.

bell hooks tells us in Communion: The Female Search for Love that patriarchal culture teaches women from a young age that they are the arbiters of emotional understanding and love in the world, but also that emotional intelligence and love are useless and shameful. This catch-22 means that women, in general, are likely to feel deeply ashamed of anything related to emotion. I see this at work in Barnes & Noble. Despite the fact that romance is a billion-dollar industry and made up at least one-third of the U.S. fiction market in 2015, people are not buying these books in public. 82% of romance readers are women, but I don’t see women buying these intensely emotional books at the store, and it’s a sign that the patriarchy is alive and well.

I used to be one of these people. I didn’t want to pick up a book with a muscular, naked torso on the front. I wanted to be seen as a “serious” reader, unwittingly buying into both the patriarchy and the incorrect notion that romance novels can’t be well-written. But I’m delighted to report that I have changed, thanks to Alisha Rai and her stupendous Wrong to Need You. This volume is the second in Rai’s Forbidden Heart’s trilogy, and is an outstanding testament to the idea that emotions are not useless – they are important, they are well-crafted, and we should all shamelessly flock to the books that tout them as essential to our culture.

wrong

 

Family Drama is the BEST Drama (to read)

There’s a reason that soap operas like General Hospital and Days of Our Lives have been on TV for decades. It’s that people loooove drama. Specifically, we love drama that can’t be easily tied up in a season or in a movie, but that comes back to bite you in the ass when you’re least expecting it. We all have this kind of unresolved drama in our lives, often in the form of our family members, and it’s not fun to live through, but it is hella fun to watch.

Alisha Rai provides a decadent, sensational story in her Forbidden Hearts trilogy, in which she zooms in on a fictional town in upstate New York known for its Montague-Capulet levels of drama between two families, the Chandlers and the Kanes. Wrong to Need You focuses on Jackson Kane and his recently-departed brother’s wife Sadia Ahmed. Years ago, they were the closest of friends, but after being accused of a crime that he says he didn’t commit, Jackson fled, and Sadia married his older brother. Now that Jackson is back in town, he and Sadia have to navigate not only their intense (and now lust-filled) connection, but a town that can’t forgive the sins of the past.

Oh yes, y’all. Rai weaves a story rife with family politics which only amp up the emotional intrigue and romantic longing between Sadia and Jackson on every page. From the very first pages of this unforgettable story, I got major Cat on a Hot Tin Roof vibes. Each interaction between each character, even if it only lasts for a few minutes, breathes with tension because the drama goes back for years. I don’t know how Rai manages to infuse a past history that you haven’t read into the present, but she does it. Because I’m committed to writing mostly spoiler-free recommendations, trust me when I say that the drama is so worth it. (Sex. I’m talking about some really good sex after some epic drama.)

Characters that Make You Feel All the Feels

You can’t have a good story without characters that make you feel, and luckily for us, Rai gifts us two extremely sympathetic protagonists who just need some love in their lives. I loved getting to know Sadia and Jackson on an intimate level, mainly because Rai writes them outside of any stereotypes or tropes. Jackson is a muscle-laden, broody man, worthy of any romance book cover, but he broods mainly because he’s just always been quiet and kept to himself. Sadia is in full command of her bisexuality and her identity as a Muslim woman, confirming the fact that just because a character is marginalized doesn’t mean her story needs to be about oppression, and struggles instead with being a new widow and a single mom to boot.

Also, the character subplots in this book are incredible. Many contemporary stories forget that protagonists have parents or siblings, and instead focus on the families that we choose in life. That’s fine, but I really enjoyed delving into Jackson’s complicated relationship with his mother and Sadia’s competitive but loving bonds with her four (!) sisters. I haven’t often encountered books that make me want to know more about the secondary characters, but Wrong to Need You is so beautifully textured and realistic that I want more time with every character.

THE SEX IS REALLY GOOD

If you imagined me screaming that caption and then running away to hide behind the couch, you imagined correctly. Because I am both the product of the patriarchy and the biggest nerd you can imagine, I have a difficult time writing openly about sex. But Alisha Rai inspires me to try, to be shameless in my writing about her writing, so I’m going to try.

The sex scenes are just very, very good. I’ve read my fair share of romances, and they’re not always good. Some are PWP, which in Internet Land means “Porn Without Plot.” These types of stories function purely to satisfy the reader, and sometimes they get the job done. Rai’s writing destroys the idea of PWP and leaves it whimpering in the corner because her plot and her characters are transcendent, and her sex scenes work because her plot and characters are so good.

Nothing about Alisha Rai’s writing is standard. She evokes passion and emotion into every scene, whether it’s sexual or not. So when you get to the sexual encounters between Jackson and Sadia, be it a kiss or some hardcore grinding in an alley, it’s a sensory, evocative, and completely consensual experience every single time.

My Verdict:

Friends, come over to the light side. Come over to the aisle of Barnes & Noble where glorious, muscular torsos are on full display. Wrong to Need You is a jewel of the romance genre, and of fiction in general. Rai creates a page-turning plot full of juicy family drama, riveting characters that pull you into their textured lives, and sex that makes 50 Shades of Grey feel like 50 Shades of Meh. What else could you want?

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

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Making Reading Magical Again: A Review of Wintersong

Tulip Majumdar

There is nothing more magical than diving into another world when you’re a child, whether it’s through a good movie, a video game, or for me, a really great book. In his book Why Write?, University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson discusses the particulars of reading as a child. He writes that reading when you’re young is a completely immersive experience, one in which the mundane norms of real life fall away in their entirety and you’re fully transported to another time, place, or body.

The slightly depressing thing, Edmundson continues, is that this complete immersion doesn’t continue into adulthood, especially for writers.  We have to shed books as a form of true escapism when we grow older, because when we turn to books as writers, we read to analyze HOW our contemporaries or literary heroes are writing, not just what. Of course we still enjoy reading, but it becomes a rare thing for people who decide to devote their lives or parts of their lives to the written word to truly fall into a story, free of criticism or analysis, like we did while we were young.

And I’m sorry to say that Edmundson is completely right. When I pick up a book, any book, these days, it takes all of five minutes for my inner English major to rear her annoying head and start pulling apart the text in front of me. But sometimes, if I’m really lucky, a certain book comes along and completely knocks me back to my childhood, to days spent curled around stories that pulled me out of the bunny-covered walls of my bedroom and into other worlds. And the first book that’s done that for me in recent times? Wintersong by Korean-American author S. Jae-Jones.

Wintersong is a triumph of storytelling. Set in the German state of Bavaria, the events of the Wintersong spin into motion when Liesl’s younger sister Käthe is captured by Der Erlkönig, the legendary and mythical Goblin King. Desperate to retrieve her sister from his clutches, Liesl becomes swept up in a Romantic quest that turns out to be about more than just physically rescuing her sister from the underworld. Her ambitions, family relationships, and desire to live an unrestrained life all come to a head as she pursues the Goblin King underground.

First, Jae-Jones crafts incredibly human characters that you immediately identify with. She does what writers like George R.R. Martin are getting lauded for these days – she builds a fantastical world full of real, flawed human beings, all of whom have their own motives and agendas and wishes for their lives. There are no outright heroes or villains in Wintersong, not even the trickster Goblin King, who becomes an incredibly alluring love interest for Liesl. You end up sympathizing with every single character in the novel at some point, except maybe the goblins. And for a first time novelist like Jae-Jones, that is freaking masterful.

Not only does Jae-Jones create a brilliant cast of characters, she writes a lead character that has a creative agency that I haven’t really ever encountered before in YA literature. Liesl may be young and figuring her life out, but one thing she is sure of is her passion for creating and composing music. This passion, along with truly mesmerizing passages detailing Liesl’s composing, drives the novel and, of course many of Liesl’s missteps. But seeing this young woman so completely certain of her passion and her desire to freely create music is one of my favorite things about Wintersong.

The best thing by far about this novel is the mental landscape Jae-Jones draws for the reader. The Goblin King is first and foremost a trickster, and under his influence, the characters literally get caught in a haze of belief versus disbelief, real versus imagined. Liesl remembers something important and true on one page, but she forgets it by the next. She questions her reality, and somehow you find yourself trying to remind Liesl of what’s really happening. Jae-Jones’s interplay between a captivated narrator and a truly invested reader constructs a world of whispered magic that you can’t easily get home from. As Liesl falls prey to the magic of Der Erlkönig and his kingdom, you too fall under Jae-Jones’ spell.

My verdict:

If there’s any book that completely subverts the stigma about YA novels being somehow less complex and captivating than novels written for adults, it’s Wintersong. From a group of gorgeous, multifaceted characters to an inspiring lead protagonist who convinces you to live a more creative life, to a spellbinding landscape of questioning what’s real and what’s not, Wintersong unapologetically throws you into a deeply immersive and mesmerizing world that you’ll never want to leave.

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Brown People Can Have Sex Too! A Review of The Bollywood Bride

Tulip Majumdar

I adore romance. And when I say adore, I really mean “I unabashedly live for all romantic storylines and romantic chemistry and romantic everything.” This obsession is not surprising. I grew up on a healthy diet of Hollywood’s romantic comedies, both classic and new, and a bombardment of Bollywood melodrama from the 90’s. From Tom Hanks’ heart-eyes at Meg Ryan at the airport in Sleepless in Seattle, to Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol’s sultry waltz in that rain-drenched gazebo in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I go absolutely gaga for all kinds of love stories. Believe me when I say that from a very young age up until I met my husband, I had always imagined myself meeting the love of my life against a gorgeous backdrop and a soundtrack sung either by Savage Garden or Sonu Nigam.

So just imagine my pure rapture when I stumbled onto The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev. A Persuasion-esque love affair for the ages, The Bollywood Bride contains absolutely everything an avid reader AND a romance fanatic could want. The story follows Ria Parkar, a Bollywood film starlet who, after years away from her family, gets sucked back into the pain of her non-public life when her cousin Nikhil decides to get married in Chicago. And the great source of this epic pain? Among other things, a slighted, long-lost lover by the name of Vikram.

The best novels about love aren’t just about love – they’re about the messy, heartbreaking, and often painful lives of the people who happen to fall in love. And from the first page of The Bollywood Bride, Dev’s alluring, vibrant language coupled with her ability to construct such authentic and complex characters seduced me out of my own world and into Ria’s.

Dev channels Jane Austen with her uncanny skill to adapt the Indian immigrant community in America in an authentic and consumable way. She immediately thrusts Ria back into a world of wedding prep and preening, yet loving, Indian aunties who all color-coordinate their saris. And as someone who has grown up surrounded by uncles and aunties who have somehow become family through our shared Indian-American experience, I can tell you that I have never seen my community described in such a real and hilarious way.

You also get a happy yet completely unexpected taste of Charlotte Bronte in this novel as Dev deftly unwraps the secrets of Ria’s past, and how those secrets caused her to break Vikram’s heart prior to the events of this novel. The story is steeped in secrets and secret-keeping, which only heightens the tension between Ria and Vikram, as they simultaneously explore and avoid the nostalgia of their childhood together and the realization that their love for one another hasn’t disappeared, but evolved.

But the most tantalizing aspect of this novel was one that I did not see coming at all. I was drawn to The Bollywood Bride mainly because it was a romance novel written by an Indian woman about two Indian/Indian-American characters. Yay. And I expected there to be sex, because it was a romance novel, and that’s what the genre usually entails. But as I approached the final consummation of Ria and Vikram’s physical and emotional journey, i.e. their first round of really enjoyable and completely worth-the-wait sex, I realized that I had never before encountered such a raw and uninhibited depiction of Indian intimacy in fiction. And in that moment I realized: BROWN PEOPLE CAN HAVE SEX TOO.

One fact about Bollywood movies that you might not know is that they never ever show two characters having sex. Like, in a bed together. They rarely show two characters entering into a bedroom, or even making out on screen. The best you get is like a really seductive dance in the rain with extremely suggestive song lyrics. I could get into the traditionalism and conservative values and why there’s no onscreen lovemaking, but the point I’m trying to make is that realistic Indian intimacy is all but invisible in Bollywood cinema. And since #HollywoodSoWhite, there’s no Indian intimacy in films over here either.

So the fact that Dev gifts us with two unmarried Indian/Indian-Americans having delicious, well-deserved, tantalizing but not gratuitous sex is freaking groundbreaking. Instead of shying away from human sexuality, or neutering it by cutting away to a more G-rated scene, Dev revels in it, and gives her characters a sexual agency that I have only ever seen given to non-Indian characters. And for that, I am eternally grateful to Ms. Dev, and to her beautiful novel.

My verdict:

Sonali Dev’s The Bollywood Bride is an unadulterated delight. She crafts a narrative that whispers secrets on every page. She details a deeply authentic depiction of the Indian immigrant experience. And best of all, Dev opens up readers to the sexual side of Indian romance. Go read this book, and be prepared to frantically fan yourself on every single page.

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Seeing Myself: A Review of The Star-Touched Queen

Tulip Majumdar

Growing up in the nineties and early 2000’s, I didn’t encounter many young characters of color in the novels I perused. The majority of my favorite books had white male protagonists. I reread books like Tangerine by Edward Bloor, and Holes by Louis Sachar, because they featured outcasts trying to find a home for themselves, and despite the friends and relationships I had, I always felt a little on the outside growing up as well. The closest I got to really loving a heroine for everything she was and stood for was Jo March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women trilogy. She was passionate, obsessive, and didn’t embody the ideals of womanhood typically on show in 19th century New England.

As a child of Indian immigrants, I often felt torn between celebrating my Indian culture at home and on the weekend, and embracing my American-ness at school during the week. No one person or group is to blame for this inner divide – I attribute this now to a complete lack of representation of Asian kids in the media I consumed, and in the reluctance of our society to discuss diversity in an open and frank manner while I was growing up. Despite my voracious love of literature, I never once encountered a novel with a complex and non-white girl whose culture is embraced and explored. I never once read a story about an Indian girl whose culture reflected mine.

For this reason, I am so excited to share my review of The Star-Touched Queen, a YA novel written by Roshani Chokshi. Chokshi comes from an Indian and Filipino household, and she chooses to focus on her Indian heritage, and its vast mythology, in this fantasy novel. The Star-Touched Queen tells the story of Maya, princess of a fictional kingdom called Bharata, which happens to be the original Sanskrit name for India. Maya grows up on the outskirts of royal life, since her horoscope indicates that all her future holds is a dangerous marriage that will bind her with destruction and death. Her family does not willingly embrace her, either emotionally or physically, and the only real relationship she has is with her half-sister Gauri.

Maya’s real story begins when a sexy but aloof stranger named Amar whisks her away from the destruction of Bharata and makes her the queen of Akaran, the underworld. For the rest of the novel, Maya learns to navigate this new world while still struggling to understand what she really wants. For the third act of the novel, an unforeseen villain forces Maya out of Akaran, and Maya ultimately makes the choice to return, save her love, and resume the throne.

Chokshi’s writing is beautiful and intoxicating. She creates a world that is kinesthetic and touchable, and so weaves a visceral experience for her reader. You feel a part of the destiny tapestry that becomes so essential to Maya and Amar’s story. As the reader, you are not a witness to these proceedings – Chokshi’s vibrant storytelling pulls you into the narrative and makes you a silent character holding on to Maya’s hand throughout the whole story. I loved the physical experience of this novel, so gorgeously crafted by Chokshi.

The Star-Touched Queen highlights the time-old struggle between fate and personal choice as its primary theme. Maya struggles to break free from the foreboding narrative written by her astrological charts, and she is often pulled between accepting her destiny as queen of the underworld and questioning why Amar really brought her there. As a feminist, it would be easy for me to dismiss this book as yet another YA novel which inexplicably and inextricably ties the fate of a female character to that of a male character. But, I have to remind myself – The Star-Touched Queen does this deliberately and with purpose. This is a novel rooted in ideas of astrology and reincarnation, and to Chokshi’s immense credit, her character Maya fights these ideas on every step of her journey. Furthermore, the “star-crossed lovers” relationship isn’t perfect and free of conflict – Maya and Amar are vulnerable and immensely flawed characters, which ultimately makes their romance more palatable and interesting. Chokshi navigates the parameters of the fantasy romance genre with incisive choices about the strength of Maya’s character. Maya is determined to think for herself and question her situation, and her choices allow her to explore her own identity as well as save Amar from evil. Empowering? Check. Still romantic and fun to read? Double check.

But writing and thematic elements aside, the real beauty of this novel is that it gifts younger readers a completely new mythology that is accessible and fascinating. We have plenty of novels that are rooted in Greek mythology and Norse mythology – Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson universe are a prime example of the lasting power of those mythologies in the Western psyche. And I happen to love those novels. But Chokshi gives life to a world of bhuts and rakshsas, words that don’t have Wikipedia pages like centaur and minotaur but are just as interesting. She exposes this beautiful Indian mythology to a Western audience, and the fact that she is now a New York Times bestselling author means that Western audiences are ready for a new mythology.

All in all, I had a grand old time reading The Star-Touched Queen and whole-heartedly recommend it to any reader. If you’re looking for an intriguing romance, then Maya and Amar’s will sweep you off your feet. If you love the old tales of Apollo and Odin and all of their antics, this narrative teems with fantastic Indian mythology and will give those gods a run for their money. And, if you’re a young Indian girl looking for a story of a powerful heroine who makes her own choices and who just so happens to share your cultural roots and skin color, then The Star-Touched Queen is absolutely the book for you, and for me as well. Maya is the heroine I wish I’d had when I was younger and trying to feel that my brown skin was just as relevant as white skin. I am so grateful that she exists for readers now.