Sanya was always the perfect wife, working full time, raising her daughter and taking care of her husband and home. That is until she has a sudden implosion when offered a long overdue promotion. Her husband, Harry, suggests a temporary move to Copenhagen while he closes the purchase of a company there. Once there, Sanya is forced out of her bed and into high society. She is drawn immediately to the scarred owner of the company her husband is there to purchase. As Sanya tries to determine who "new" Sanya will be, she has to come to terms with who "old" Sanya was. I enjoyed the story, which is clearly a love story for Copenhagen, which is a character all to itself. A good read and an interesting look at how a sudden and unexpected event can change the course of person's life.

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MY REVIEW OF “THE COPENHAGEN AFFAIR” by AMULYA MALLADI
Kudos to Amulya Malladi, author of “The Copenhagen Affair” for the gorgeous vivid descriptions of the breathtaking landscapes, museums, restaurants, and scenery in Copenhagen. I wish a could book a flight and head there now. The genres for the novel are Fiction and Women’s Fiction.
The author describes her characters as complicated and complex, and colorful. Sanya has always been the perfect daughter, mother and wife, as well as highly efficient, but not recognized for her achievements at her office for many years. Finally, when she is told that she will be partner after too many years, Sanya has a nervous breakdown. Harry, her husband decides to take Sanya to Copenhagen while he is negotiating a major business deal. Harry feels the change of scenery will do Sanya good.
Sanya is most comfortable lying under her blankets, but slowly emerges and meets some colorful characters in Copenhagen. Sanya seems to be attracted to Anders Ravn, the man who owns the company her husband wants to acquire. There is something dark and flawed in him that intrigues her. Sanya calls herself “the old Sanya” and “the new Sanya” after her breakdown.
I appreciate that the author writes about important subjects such as depression, marriage, family, love, betrayal , loyalty, friendship and hope. Sanya questions herself and her role and her husband’s role in their marriage. This is a story of finding oneself and having the courage to break through the darkness.
I enjoyed this emotional, and thought-provoking story and would highly recommend it. I received an Advanced Reading Copy for my honest review. I look forward to reading more of Amulya Malladi’s novels.
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book during a trip to Copenhagen this summer. It accurately portrayed the quirky, cozy Danish lifestyle. I rooted for Sanya as she dealt with her depression and willed Harry to step up in their marriage. There was a crazy twist at the end, but in all an enjoyable read.

This book took me a while to read. Malladi created interesting characters but they lost some appeal due to the overwhelming focus on details that were not necessary or relevant. I do think that the author raises some interesting insights on relationships and human interactions..

The Copenhagen Affair by Amulya Malladi is a book about depression & breakdown. I found the story flat and the characters very dry and boring. Honestly, I don't enjoy this book.
Received an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for a fair review from Netgalley.

It would be easy for a reader to interpret the title of the book to allude to a romantic liaison. To me, the title meant much more – affair with a new city and more importantly with one’s own self. Malladi’s writing as well as character development is very engaging and I did not feel that her attention to detail was at any point overbearing.

Full review on my blog Desi Lekh (please follow link below)

Intellectually, I found this book interesting, with its depiction of the female main character (Sanya) suffering from clinical depression, but emotionally it didn’t move me, I found the author’s tone rather dry and flat. This dispassionate look is perhaps deliberate, in tune with or a metaphor for the supposed tendency for valuing appearance and luxury in general that, according to the author, characterizes Copenhagen upper classes.
I liked the heroine’s journey, even though throughout the first part of the story she was this numb ill woman, moving in a haze. It’s when she moves from this lethargy to the healing that the story gets more appealing. I thought the portrait of the financial world and the white-collar crime was well-done and believable. To an extent, I liked the interplay Europe/America.
Who is the hero? Ravn, the man with the scar? He’s a little less cartoonish than the other stereotypes that gravitate in the plot, but he’s just a pawn. Harry, Sanya’s husband?
I missed seeing chemistry between the prospective lovers and the current ones, with the exception of the interlude between Sanya and the younger musician. The bonds seem stronger and closer in friendships than in love relations.
I didn’t like the implied author’s tone: detached and judgmental. The story often seemed a tourist guide and a list of expensive brands. The dialogue was often artificial. Sometimes I felt that the author was manipulating the characters – for example, Mandy – so that they confirmed presuppositions (and so they become caricatures rather than fleshed-out characters).
I think this book will appeal to those who’ve already been in Copenhagen or wish to go there and those interested in the depiction of mental illness in fiction. For me it was too cerebral and lacked real passion.

While I have read all of Ms. Malladi’s novels, I must admit that The Copenhagen Affair did not resonate with me in the way her others did. Like her previous works, this book is almost instantly engaging and very readable, but it had a completely different tone than Malladi’s previous books. This one seemed much more personal to the author in addition to being a homage to her beloved adopted city of Copenhagen. The plot seemed contrived and almost secondary to the setting. It did not seem to have a specific focus and skipped around in lots of different directions. Often it wandered into the territory of a food and dining guide, sometimes the focus was on social commentary, sometimes it ventured into living with depression, and sometimes it looked at the evolution of a marriage. While all of these areas have inherent interest, it seemed, to me, to be more like a flurry of flirtatious teasers than a novel.
Still, I enjoyed my couple of evenings with this book. There were a lot of interesting comments about life in Copenhagen and more than enough information about all sorts of restaurants sprinkled through various parts of Copenhagen. It certainly held my interest; it’s just that the plot was not substantial enough to sustain the book.
At the same time, this book IS Amulya Malladi and closely reflects her interests. As anyone who has followed this author can tell, she adores good food and drink and the discovery of fabulous new restaurants is a high point for her. She also clearly loves her adopted hometown of Copenhagen and that pours out of these pages. It definitely made me want to add Copenhagen to my travel bucket list!

This is the first time reading a book by this author. I requested this book after seeing this author on Facebook and in the Lake Union Authors Group on FB.
When starting this book I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting into. I tend to not read blurbs or reviews about books I read. I like to go into without any preconceived ideas.
After reading this story I have to say it was a little different from what I normally read but so glad I gave it a chance and really enjoyed the characters and their story.
I enjoyed meeting these characters and seeing the main points of depression and marriage being brought up in this story and how the characters dealt with their issues. The setting of the story in Copenhagen is beautiful and I would love to visit someday. It sounds amazing.

Sanya has a breakdown at work and becomes very depressed. Her husband Harry thinks moving to Copenhagen might help Sanya feel better. Harry is trying to aquire Ravn's company. While in Copenhagen, Sanya learns many secrets including her husband's affairs. She thinks of having an affair with Ravn. Can Harry and Sanya save their marriage before it's too late? It was a really good book that I enjoyed. Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an ARC in return for an honest review.

The city of Copenhagen plays a role in this story of Sanya, a financial consulatant who suffers a breakdown and begins to reevaluate her choices. Married to Harry, she realizes she has been a shell of herself, trying to make everyone happy. Sanya is a complex character, and there are many other personalities in the book. I like this author and her writing style.

I received a copy of "The Copenhagen Affair" from NetGalley for an honest review. I wish to thank NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Amulya Malladi for the opportunity to read this book.

OMG, I loved, loved, loved this book. I totally feel that I am the American version of the main character, Sanya!!! This main character is funny, witty, sarcastic, and straight-forward - very similar to me, in so many ways. The best thing that I liked about this novel was that I have suffered with depression like this character and understand the dark place. The author was able to create depression almost as a character in a way that was understandable to some who has suffered with this illness or who has not suffered with this illness.

Now, don't get me wrong - this is not a dark, dreary novel! It is a fun read - I was laughing to myself while reading the FIRST page. This is a fun read and I was NOT able to put this book down and inhaled it in ONE day (started reading it THIS morning and finished this evening) after downloading it yesterday - I had to finish another book first!! Don't wait like me to read it - read it NOW!

If you would like a book with strong character development, an interesting story-line, and a beautiful city, Copenhagen, as a central character - this is YOUR book. READ this book - it is a strong recommend for me. BTW, I have read many of this author's book and this one is so different and so different, but SO perfect!!

A literary fiction novel. Sanya, Indian-American, is the perfect wife, businesswoman, and mother – until her nervous breakdown leaves her unable to work or maintain her relationships. She and her husband Harry move for a year to Copenhagen, partly for Harry's job (his company is in the late stages of acquiring an IT company based there) but mostly in the hope that a change of scene will make Sanya feel better. She soon meets handsome, mysterious Anders Ravn, the owner of the company Harry is buying, and begins to fall in love with him, even contemplating leaving Harry or having an affair. Matters are further complicated when it begins to seem that Ravn may be involved in a white-collar crime with the potential to affect Harry's company, and Sanya has to decide what she wants and who she is.

It's a fun little book, if a bit slight. Sanya's depression never felt entirely realistic to me. It's mostly an excuse for How Stella Got Her Groove Back-esque reinvention (there's even a makeover scene complete with new hairdo, pedicure, and Brazilian wax), with a few textbook-perfect symptoms. There's never a sense of the actual lived experience of clinical depression or anxiety. But that's all right, because the main goal of the book is to make you want to visit Copenhagen, and in that it succeeds 100%. The restaurants, the cafes, the stores, tourist trips to hippie neighborhoods to buy pot, name-brand clothes and internationally-recognized interior designers, the boat trips to summer houses in Sweden... it's like a glossy tourism ad in novel form. And hey, sometimes that's what you want! :D It's certainly what I was happy to spend a few days reading.

Though now I really really want to go to Copenhagen.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2049622888

I really enjoyed this. A bitchy look at some frankly dreadful people - the rich American set - in Copenhagen. their preoccupation with sex, fashion and money, their not particularly hidden racism, and their (spoiler alert) comeuppance. Though these kinds of people never really suffer. Anyway, the main character, Sanya, is lovely - and a fairly well written account of someone with depression. The symptoms and feelings are at times, beautifully written and often very simply told - I loved the description of Sanya and Anders Ravn walking together in the art museum.
This bears, unsurprisingly, little resemblance to the Copenhagen I visited with much less money last year, but I enjoyed it immensely.

This book is totally chick lit and this is not a genre that I usually read much. The fact that the protagonist is a recovering from a mental illness makes it more interesting by far though than your average romantic novel. The characters contained in this book are the second thing that puts this book above the average beach read.

The protagonist Sanya, an ethnically Indian, American who before her breakdown was a people pleaser and probably a bit of a doormat but after the implosion, she does not fall back into her old ways. This book at heart is a Sanya finding her way back up to a new normality and figuring out what is healthy for her.

I felt the character of the handsome husband Harry is a bit two dimensional, but maybe that is how Sanya saw of him. The main "love interest" Anders Ravn, the owner of the business that Harry is in the process of buying, with his facial scar and the propensity towards depression is much more well developed.

The one thing that bothered me about this book, is especially in the beginning there is an talk of clothes labels and other seeming product placement. I am not sure if it faded a bit in the second half of the book or I was just more invested in the story and not bothered but it did grate a bit.

The exploration of the whole ex-pat scene in Copenhagen was very interesting, and as the author lived there herself for some years I guess are an amplified version of reality. The women of the rich husbands try to compete with each other over who is busiest, when in reality they have extensive amounts of leisure time. Also the comparisons between the Danish and American work ethic and the disparate maternity rights where fascinating to me as to an outsider of both countries.

If you want something fairly light and frivolous, but not totally shallow this book may be for you. The recovery from a breakdown gives this book more depth and there is romance, and sometimes it seems like the primary point of this book, but it isn't.

This was a light, fun read! It did get heavy on details/descriptions, as though the author was trying to give us an etymology of every street, building, or name in Copenhagen, but overall, it was very enjoyable.
For once, the "heroine" followed good sense and not feelings and that made me so glad. Malladi's writing is so beautifully vivid; I have a clear mental picture of each of the characters, which were not only well-formed but were all very likable and relatable.

Harry and Sanya have been married for two decades and have a 18 year old daughter, Sara, and booth work pressing jobs. Sanya was at a board meeting where she was to become a partner and had a breakdown. Harry thought that they could start a new life in Copenhagen reviewing a company his company was interested in buying.

The new Sanya falls in love with a man with a scat on his face who happens to own the company there looking at. Long story short they don't end up buying the company because there was funny business in the books. However, the owner the company, Ravn, kidnapped Sanya and Harry followed them to an island and ends up quitting his job and becoming spontaneous with Sanya. Ending up taking her to Paris on the back of a motorcycle.

Amulya wrote this as a tribute to Copenhagen after living there fourteen years. She did ok and I'll recommend this to my readers.

"The Copenhagen Affair" stays true to the name and gives the readers a view of the amorous high society of Denmark.
A true indulgence for those looking for a slice of Danish delight!
I loved Ravn!
Kudos Ms Malladi! Thanks to Netgalley for my ARC!

I was delighted to have the opportunity to read an advance copy of The Copenhagen Affair since Amulya Malladi is one of my favorite authors. I love that each book she writes is unique- no cookie- cutter writing here. Although she has previously written about some of the issues that are in this book, there are completely different circumstances in this one. The book is very atmospheric about life in Copenhagen for an elite population of wealthy locals and American expatriates, a far cry from her previous book, The Sound of Language, about an Afghan refugee in Denmark. The author did a great job portraying marriages, infidelity, living abroad and depression. I highly recommend this book and think it would be a wonderful selection for book discussion groups.

An impressive novel! Amulya Malladi delved into depression and anxiety in an authentic manner, making it easy to connect with the protagonist. Her journey was an engaging experience.