As Tina travels to India for her cousin's wedding she is still trying to find where she fits into the world. An Indian-American who doesn't feel like she fits in America or India this book follows Tina and her separated parents on a trip that will certainly change their lives. I enjoyed how the wedding events came to life through the descriptions and the cast of characters were all special in their own way.

I finished Destination Wedding and it was so much fun! It’s about an Indian-American family that goes to India for a huge family wedding. There are so many funny anecdotes and the characters were so quirky and fun. The dad who was always trying to optimize his Fitbit steps was without actually walking was my favorite. This reminded me a lot of Crazy Rich Asians with the humor and big family drama.

This was a fun, engaging read. Tina Das, who lives in New York, travels along with her best friend to attend an over the top wedding in Delhi.
It is somewhat of a coming of age story although she is 34, she just broke up with her boyfriend, isn’t overly excited about her job and doesn’t feel comfortable as to where she fits, India or America. Oh and her parents that are divorced both attend as well. Her mom is quite a character and has her new boyfriend along with her.
The lavish wedding and wealthy guests magnified the great divide between the rich and the poor of India. I liked that It included love stories between. the young and not so young.
I enjoyed the humor, the wedding shenanigans, adventures in Delhi and learning about Indian culture.

If you liked Crazy Rich Asians you will LOVE Destination Wedding. I honestly think I loved it more. It had all of the sparkle and lights and glamour with slightly less people to keep up with. There were some unexpected twists and turns that I wasn’t sure which way they would turn out and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book!

I absolutely loved this book. The story was so original, the characters were loveable. I'm so glad I read this book, I flew through it in a day!

This was a fun read! I enjoyed getting to know the characters and I also enjoyed the insight that I was provided to Indian culture.

First of all I loved the back drop of this book being in India.

I feel like this was the first book that I've read based in India and I really did enjoy it. This author did a great job at showing the development of relationships between all of the people in this book. It did jump around sometimes if a character thought about someone it would just to that person's perspective leaving me confused sometimes. Overall though it was written beautifully. We follow a divorced couple their daughter and her best friend all traveling to India to attend a family wedding. Like at most weddings people reflect and make major decisions in order to better themselves and make themselves happy.

Tina Das, Born in America, but family is from India, heads back to India with her best friend, Her divorced mom and Dad, as well as her mom's boyfriend to attend a wedding of one of her cousins back home. While there, her friend tries to find herself ( or that's how it appeared to me) and her dad meets a woman he was set up with from an online dating site. Tina meets Sid, an out of work actor that she met previously and they go on a couple of dates.

My main issue with this story is the multiple plots and points of view. Other than that, it was an interesting read.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Normally I find myself relating to the protagonist or her friends on most levels from the idea of growing up and not understanding which road to take to facing ones fears. However, as the two young women of the story went through the plot I found myself struggling to find a piece of relatability within them. I was more drawn to the parents’s dynamic within the story then anything else.
Overall this is a book that I wanted to like so badly that I had to go back and reread some parts. While I can’t say that I disliked the book, reading it involved forcing my eyes not to glaze over each time Marianne and Tina entered the scene.

Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu filters extravagance through the itinerary of a weeklong Indian wedding, following a blended Indian immigrant family and their friends journeying from New York to Delhi to celebrate one couple’s vows, and finding their own unexpected happy-ever-afters. Basu introduces a whole host of characters, each interesting in their own right, and formats the novel like a reality show to treat the reader to one revealing clip after another, connecting them through similarities and differences for segue and contrast. The chapter headings are descriptive sentences that seem to be revelatory but are also titillating because they hint at but never really give away what is to come. Take for instance the first chapter entitled, “JFK Airport: Their flight is delayed due to technical reasons and everyone is secretly wishing airlines didn’t announce that and make passengers nervous” which focuses on what the travelers are using as a vehicle for their separate anxieties as they embark on their trip, concerns that come to a head at the departure terminal but that aren't limited to nervousness about travel. The novel opens with the adult daughter lamenting that her mother is bringing a boyfriend to the wedding but that she is arriving without a date, meanwhile her father is concerned that his white replacement will look better in Indian clothes than he does and is therefore traveling in a turtleneck which gives him a headache because Esquire magazine says the shirt will give a dignified appearance.
I found the writing to be humorous but endearing because while Basu invites you to mock the stereotypical characters, she also shows you their insecurities and solicits your understanding and empathy. So she offers the stories of the Indian who succeeded in assimilating in the US but has no identity to pass on to his child and that of the child who mourns the loss of family and looks for meaning in their professional lives. By presenting the haves and the have-nots, both of whom struggle with the same basic issues, Basu offers a look past the characters' superficial fixations and into deeper, universal concerns.
Through a series of flash backs that could be as sudden as a character’s sharing a memory or a conversation about a long ago experience, we get glimpses into the characters’ motivations, feminist reversals by showing us women in power in various situations, even if it’s just an elderly woman resisting her son or a woman refusing the advances of a man.
While this book also ranked highly on my entertainment scale, Destination Wedding offered much more than just a light read and I found a lot to enjoy in the political but pleasurable prose.
Note: I received a free Netgalley download courtesy of Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much for allowing me to review this book.

Unfortunately, I was not able to finish this book (around 100 pages is where I stopped). I really wanted to love this book, because I love books about travel and self-discovery and non-white romantic leads, but this book just did not work for me.

Things I liked:
-The heavy dialogue. I know some people had some issues with this aspect of the book, but dialogue is usually my favorite parts of a book so this was something that I appreciated.
-The discussion of immigration and the complexities of understanding one's identity in America.
-The book was so full of Indian culture and unapologetically embraced it. Sometimes when there are genre books written by non-white authors that are sold to an American audience, they downplay their culture to make it more "digestible." So, I really appreciate Basu for not watering down her cultural.

Thing I didn't like:
-Some of the jokes about body image/weight and classism. They just felt a little unnecessary to me.
- None of the romantic pairings in this book seemed to have strong chemistry.
-I found Tina to be a little annoying, and her immaturity sometimes felt a little unbelievable to me.
-Lastly, and something that I have seen other people mention about this book is that there seems to be little editing for this book. From the poor sentence structures to the various plots that were haphazardly thrown together, it just made it difficult to continue reading.

I think this book will work for some people, especially those who are looking for a book that would serve as a good palate cleanser after reading something more dense. It just wasn't for me I don't think.

A journey into the life of a family as the return to India for a family wedding.

Tina Das doesn't belong anywhere. In America she is too Indian and in India she is to American. Not only doesn't she feel like she belongs in the world, she struggles to find a place in her family. Her divorced parents are both moving on with their love lives and Tina often feels extra. She says she is married to her career but even that feels like she's failing.

Over the course of a week we learn more about the India we don't often see in the movies. A family who immigrated to America and how they interact with the past.

A good pick for fans of The Namesake. This is more a character study than plot, but written so well you will continue to turn pages like it was a commercial read. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The cover really doesn't do the story justice and I could see readers passing over this believing it to be a romance.

This book sounded so promising!! I have been to Indian weddings in the United States, but never before in India, so I was excited to armchair travel my way there and experience this wedding!

Unfortunately, instead, I struggled to finish this one. The writing style relies on super-long sentences and constant head-hopping. These quick jumps in perspective to the point of view of the most minor of characters is so distracting. Plus, this is a real pet peeve of mine to encounter. I kept hoping that the perspective would settle down (it doesn't) and that the book would improve (it doesn't). This book really had the potential to be funny, entertaining and also educational about the culture, but it never really hits any of those marks. The characters are all so shallow that they are quite hard to like. No one really comes to life here and they are so wealthy that many comments are so tone-deaf aside from a few rather pointless nods in that direction.

But, more even than the shallow characters, the writing style really bothered me from start to finish, Frankly, the book feels like it needs a much stronger editorial presence to focus things a bit more. Plus, the plot is nothing more than a jumble of romantic entanglements - nothing really page turning. I wish that I had not forced myself to finish this one, honestly. I had really wanted to enjoy this more, which made this all the more disappointing in the quite predictable ending.

I struggled to get into this one. It took some work to keep up with all the POVs. There were some nice moments that I enjoyed. I was also in a mood most of the time when reading this. It makes me super picky which I hate.

I voluntarily read an early copy.

Author #Diksha Basu is the internationally bestselling author of#’The Windfall’. And now she has this witty and romantic novel #’Destination Wedding that is six stars.It has charm,belonging, and just will entertain you to no end.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Diksha Basu and #Ballantine Books

Although I am not your typical romance reader, I enjoy books that show me another culture, and Basu does this. On a trip from the US back to India for a wedding, Tina, raised in Ohio, is in limbo with her reality TV show and through her eyes the reader discovers the unique qualities of Indian culture and does it without stereotypes. Yes, it’s a romance, but it’s also about self-discovery and figuring out where you fit into a family.

Rating: 3 Stars
Recommend? For people who enjoyed the first Crazy Rich Asians book

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for a copy of this book for an honest review.

I went back and forth on my feelings about this book as I was reading it. The book follows an American Indian family as they travel from the US to India for a relative's lavish wedding. I enjoyed the character development of the parents: they're divorced, but find a way to still be partners as they explore new relationships. However their daughter, Tina, and her best friend, Marianne, were both difficult characters to read. Both characters are annoying in their privilege in the beginning of the book, and neither were developed in a way that made me warm to them like I hoped.

I also went back and forth on whether I liked the narration style. It jumps from character to character fluidly, and the experience of knowing Tina's thoughts one second and her rickshaw driver's the next was confusing in the beginning of the book, but by the end I enjoyed it and actually felt like it moved the storyline forward in an engaging way. This combined with the backdrop of the lavish South Asian wedding are what gives this book Crazy Rich Asians vibes, although I don't think the story was woven together as expertly as in CRA.

To end on a positive note: I loved the chapter headings! They always made me laugh and had some of the best character development in the book.

A really interesting premise. So many can relate to being stuck in between cultures and not knowing how to assimilate while maintaining traction, making the family happy and still having your own life. Tina doesn’t really know where she fits in and isn’t sure how to fix it. Half in and half out and not feeling like she belongs anywhere all while dealing with her family and friends who are also going through their own dramas. Not easy and so common. Family responsibility, drama, and a bunch of friends that make her crazy. Interesting read.

This is the story of Tina, an Indian American woman, who has always straddled the line between belonging in India and belonging in America. In this novel Tina travels back to India with her divorced parents and her best friend Marianne for her cousin Shefali’s wedding. I loved everything about this book. The descriptions of India were so rich and detailed that I felt like I was vacationing there. The dialogue was sharp and funny and reminded me of any Mindy Kaling show ever. I loved everything about this book and would read it again and recommend to all of my friends.

I can’t recommend this book enough. In a summer when we can’t travel and learn about new people and places, it was so nice to spend a week with a family that was different than mine and yet universally the same. No family is alike but every family loves each other, and this made me so homesick!