Sari, Not Sari

Sari, Not Sari

This book was so promising. It should have been a fun rom-com about an Indian wedding. It starts out ok but soon there were huge plot holes all over the place.

Manny isn’t supposed to know anything about her Indian heritage. Okay. But she knows nothing. She knows so little that I’m glad that no one asked her to find India on a globe.

I’m not Indian. I’ve never been to an Indian celebration of any kind. But some things you just pick up from reading books or seeing TV and movies or, I don’t know, just existing on this planet.

She had no idea that some Indian families may object to people marrying other people who aren’t Indian. She was incredulous and questioned it over and over. Come on, this is the plot of a lot of stories. Ok, maybe she’s never read a book or watched a TV show where this was plot. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. But then – at the end of the book – she mentions how a person she knows tells her plots of Bollywood movies all the time and this has been a plot point in most of them!

Problem number two – They make up the stupidest cover story ever for going to the wedding. They pretend to be business partners on a new venture. The man works for his family business. He’s a busy executive. Suddenly he has time for a new business that no one has ever heard of on top of that? Why not just say that Manny is an only child and never got to go to an Indian wedding? It makes way more sense than their cover story. Cue her being shocked every time the cover story fell apart.

Problem the third – She used her real name. Supposedly she was on TV a lot and was just on the cover of the most read magazine in the country. No one was going to recognize her? Furthermore, even if she wasn’t recognized, no one was going to do a quick Google? She was shocked when that happened too.

Four – Her business operations make no sense. The business idea is original and fun. Just don’t look too close at the logistics. There is a call center but they discuss the new clients every morning and there only seem to be a few clients each day? Maybe she only reviews the complicated ones. We’ll give her that. There has to be more if this is supposedly a multimillion dollar business that is supporting an executive team that is throwing around company money on personal expenses like confetti. Then she has this assistant who she is promoting to run an entire international expansion but who she still calls to have her book plane tickets and get her appropriate clothing. What is this woman’s job? How is she supposed to run most of the business and clean up after you like a nanny? She needs a better boundaries and a raise.

Five – Everyone in his family already knows all the secrets that Sammy has. But no one in this family that prides itself on loving each other and supporting each other is communicating with each other. They all go out of their way to talk through her instead of talking to each other. This Sammy guy is the king of not wanting to talk about anything. He tells her repeatedly that he doesn’t want to talk about anything not fun when she says that it important for her to talk to him. Then he has the nerve to yell at her for not telling him her import news when he finds out.

This book was exhausting. I was yelling at it as I was listening. I ended up speeding up the last 2 hours because I just wanted to be done but had listened for too long to just abandon it at that point. I wanted it to all pull together at the end and magically fix all the plot holes. It didn’t. So, great idea. Not so great execution.