Guest post written by Lies and Other Love Languages author Sonali Dev
USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style stories that explore universal issues. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and Kirkus Reviews. She has won numerous accolades, including the American Library Association’s award for best in genre, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and multiple RT Seals of Excellence; has been a RITA finalist; and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls her “not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance novelists working today.” She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog. Find more at her website.
Releasing on September 26th, Lies and Other Love Languages is an emotional story of three women navigating ugly truths and safe lies with only love to guide them on a journey of motherhood, friendship, and life.
I moved to the USA at the age of twenty-three almost three decades ago. I was, back then, the type of person that I now look back on with some bafflement: An immigrant by choice. Someone who left a perfectly good life–a tight knit family and a fair amount of privilege and opportunity—to chase the dream of adventure, to explore that elusive ‘something more’ that lay outside my comfortable bubble. Now, a perfectly split-down-the-middle Indian-American, I fit and don’t fit equally in both my homes. The irony? I’d choose the same path of losing myself and finding myself all over again. Because it gave me the opportunity to build a world from scratch. Almost everyone builds a marriage, a career, a life. Immigrants need to build family, to curate and nurture it.
There’s a reason my books center found family, it’s the context that lends meaning to my characters’ journeys. In LIES AND OTHER LOVE LANGUAGES, Rani is embraced by Vandy’s family as one of their own and it changes the trajectory of her life. It’s also something I look for in the books I read. So, here’s a list of books that take you inside the experience of not needing blood or marriage to feel related.
While You Were Dreaming by Alisha Rai
A spin on one of my favorite nineties romantic comedy films by one of my favorite romance authors, this YA walks the line between sweet and raw. With her mother deported and her sister and her on the rockiest of terms, Sonia craves family. She finds it by chance in the close-knit family of her crush when she unwittingly rescues him from drowning. His family welcomes her wholeheartedly into their fold, wrongly assuming she’s his girlfriend. And while being part of a family is as soothing and delicious as the food they shower her with, the sense of betraying her own mother speaks perfectly to the dichotomy of being an immigrant, split between and beholden to two disparate worlds.
The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel
This sharply written novel follows a world-traveling photojournalist who shuns every form of home and has no interest in belonging anywhere. Her adoptive parents, who were white, are dead and she’s never had any interest in tracing her birth parents. When a stranger leaves her an apartment in Boston that is filled with clues about her history, Meena’s Journalistic curiosity is piqued. The inherited apartment comes with Indian aunties who have no sense of boundaries and a hot neighbor with an adorable untrained puppy. As she unravels the clues to her origins, she learns how to let people in despite the discomfort of vulnerability and finally understands what you can have when you stop running away.
The Dating Plan by Sara Desai
Desai writes the perfect combination of laugh out loud humor and sizzling hot chemistry. Daisy is a super smart, slightly socially awkward computer programmer with no interest in marriage who wants her family to stop pressuring her about it. Liam is an entrepreneur with a bad boy vibe who needs to be married to inherit and save his family’s brewery. Naturally, a marriage of convenience serves both their purposes. Except the feelings that come up aren’t quite convenient. One of the most delightful parts is how nurturing Daisy’s single father is and the fact that Liam when he was a boy found a parent in him. And of course the no-boundaries community and the auntie who makes the most disgusting food combinations that everyone eats, because: love.
Never Meant to Stay by Trisha Das
This hilarious and adorable story is set in contemporary New Delhi so it’s the flip side of this theme. Samara has grown up all over the world as the motherless daughter of a diplomat father seeking home everywhere and finding it nowhere. She returns to India to photograph weddings while she waits to start grad school in New York and finds herself living with family friends. The family is grieving and Samara storms into the household like a do-gooder tornado and turns everything the right side up. Except Sharav, the oldest son, who’s lost his youth to responsibility after his father’s death. He’s engaged and broody and she makes him want to find the lost parts of himself the way he and his family have helped her find home.
Tastes Like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma
My favorite thing about Sharma’s books is the deep fondness and joy with which she writes about the culture. This steamy romp delves right into the heart of immigrant life where friend groups are as invested in one another as family. After starting their relationship off on the wrong foot, Bunty and Bobbi call a truce when they’re tasked with planning their best friends’ wedding. The problem is someone is trying to sabotage the event. But there’s help to be had from a group of meddling aunties who would do anything for the kids in their community. As Bunty and Bobbi banter their way through a big fat Indian wedding, with a trip to Vegas for the bachelor-bachelorette party, we get to dive into the familial relationships their immigrant parents have built and experience how children of immigrants thrive among members of the community with the same bi-cultural identities.
Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron
The South Asian diaspora extends to every corner of the world and has created distinct subcultures that merge a strong spine of identity from the Indian subcontinent with local culture. Heron writes about South Asian immigrants to Africa who then migrated to North America and it’s a rich world to get lost in. Jana and Anil separated five years ago after a short affair that gave them a daughter they adore. Now they’re forced to spend time with each other at a destination wedding in Serengeti National Park. In an attempt to help her get through the challenging situation, Jana’s friends come up with a list of activities to get the usually straight laced Jana out of her comfort zone. It’s a coming into your own story deeply rooted in community.
Sugar, Spice, and Can’t Play Nice by Annika Sharma
The friend group at the heart of this sweet romance calls themselves the Chai Masala Club. They’re a group of twenty somethings who’ve recently moved to New York and stand in as family for one another. This is especially important because Payal and Ayaan’s families aren’t exactly putting them first when they arrange a marriage between them to go with the merger between their family businesses. Payal and Ayaan go along with the plan in part because they want to help their families, but also because they’re both secretly planning to break off the engagement after the merger. The road toward that goal isn’t smooth when they start to get to know each other and sparks fly. Their dysfunctional families don’t help things, and if not for their found family, they might lose their chance at happiness with each other.
Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin
This delightful retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is set in the tightly knit Golden Crescent community in Toronto. At almost thirty, Nada is struggling. The app she launched with great hope didn’t take off and living at home with a mother who can’t stop pushing her to get married and a father deeply set in his ways is making her feel helpless and stuck. So she lets her best friend drag her to the giant annual Muslim conference in downtown Toronto, where she’s reunited with Baz the great love that got away. The romance is deliciously funny and sparkling with chemistry, but it’s the community and the family that lends this book its beating heart.
