3.5 stars

Sari, Not Sari was exactly the guilty pleasure I was seeking – all things Bollywood ❤

And before I even start talking about the book, I am Indian, living in India, and the “Indian culture” that has been discussed in the book is very much true… while certain things don’t attribute to the culture per se, it is very uncommon to not see families and individuals following the customs discussed in the book.

Oh boy the way I read it when I was supposed to be studying for the exams tells about the brilliancy of the book. I loved how slowly both Manny and Sammy realized the toxic relationship they were a part of, and started to give more credit to their hearts. Now hear me out, I am not a fan on instant romance but I truly rooted for Manny and Sammy. And the ending?? Well I had expected something of the sort will happen but I was still surprised.

I would have loved to see more of the relationship dynamics of Manny and Sammy, considering their interactions were quite limited but the twists and other characters covered up the missing areas without them. I cannot wait to read other works by the author!

I was provided with an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review

This one is cute and entertaining despite leading lady Manny's rather rude attitude toward everything Indian at the beginning of the book. It works out that there's a reason for it and that she's maybe doing it subconsciously, but it still doesn't make for the most likable of characters.
It's an exploration of identity told lightheartedly and wrapped up in an extravagant Indian wedding. It was fun to see Manny slowly realize that she'd been wearing a figurative blindfold when it came to her fiance and the way her parents raised her, hiding from the pain of losing them by stepping even further away from the cultural heritage that her parents never really gave her a chance to experience and remaining in a relationship that is obvious to readers from the very beginning isn't very positive.
Everything seems to happen at a very accelerated timeline and I do wish it could have given the characters more time to really explore themselves and their feelings, but I understand that it had to be quick to fit within the timeline of the traditional wedding event.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and Simon Schuster for the very interesting read!

SNS was a quick read and a cute book. The last 1/4 of the book felt a bit rushed though and I feel there could have been more done with this plot line. I did learn a lot about Indian culture and Indian wedding traditions along the way. I look forward to future reads from Sonya Singh.

This book was so enjoyable and I’m very excited that it’s a debut author!

The writing and storytelling were excellent. I loved the colourful characters, and the way that Singh brought this world to life. I wanted to be at that wedding!

Only negative, it wasn’t long enough. I liked the idea of the climax but I wish there were a couple more chapters to give it more depth.

I ended up DNFing this book because I did not enjoy the writing style and I wasn't engaged. I didn't feel any of the romance and the dialogue was choppy and forced. I likely wouldn't recommend.

Let’s start off by saying - Mr.Patel you had me in tears. I honestly didn’t expect to have that wave of emotion but I did. It’s crazy to think what lost love - New Love - Old Love can do to a person. How it changes our persona, our identity, our happiness. I really enjoyed this journey not only with Manny Dogra but with the entire Patel clan.

But I have to say : the breakup emails at the beginning of each chapter, was my absolute favourite part of the book. And Sammy - you totally won me over 😍

As a woman married to a half Indian man, I was very interested in reading this book. Manny is the CEO of a company that helps with breakups but despite her success, she is desperate to find out more about her heritage and Indian traditions.

I really enjoyed reading about the various traditions and customs, but other than that I felt the book was predictable and flat.

As a South Asian who grew up outside of the community and looking to learn about her own roots, Sari, Not Sari's premise spoke to me on a deeply personal level, but that's about as far as it went.

Manny is a successful CEO of Breakup, a company that she built from the ground up. Her expertise is in relationships and specifically how to help people end relationships cordially with minimal damage when those relationships come to the end of the road. It's a lucrative business and people are noticing as evidenced by articles and tv interviews. A recent write up in a high-profile magazine is supposed to catapult the company into the stratosphere, but the excitement is dimmed when Manny sees that they've photoshopped her cover to make her lighter-skinned. Being that her darker skin tone is one of the few things she feels ties her to her Indian heritage, it sends her into a frenzy, and now she wants to find out more about the culture she comes from.

You know, I get all of this because I feel it, too. It's just that I found the way Manny goes about it to be a head scratcher. She agrees to help Sammy, a client and fellow South Indian, with a temporary breakup on the condition that she accompany him to his family's wedding so she can learn all about everything Indian. I have two reactions to this. One, the idea that attending a weeklong wedding celebration is enough to learn all about a culture that's as diverse as the number of dialects within the Indian subcontinent is a faulty one. Two, one of her best friends and colleague, Anjali is Indian so it makes no sense to me that she'd never sought to connect to the culture through their longtime friendship. But going to a wedding with someone she barely knows will solve her identity crisis problem. See? Head scratcher.

Full disclosure - I started Sari, Not Sari with the sincere hope of finding something meaningful for myself through Manny's experience, but it all fell flat from the beginning. I wasn't into their romance, either. I would've liked to see Manny learn about her family's roots and culture through genuine connection outside of a wedding celebration. Instead, she only saw the showy parts, the ostentatious celebratory stuff that's all surface level and part of what she's seeking. It's a small fraction of a rich culture and that's all she takes from it to feel fully Indian. It didn't jibe with me in the least.

What I was hoping for and what I read were two completely different things. Upon reflection, I think I wanted the content of Sari, Not Sari to be more women's fiction, and in a rom-com format there's only so much deep-diving that can happen into a question as loaded as "What does being Indian mean?". I'm disappointed this didn't work out for me but I think this story works for a reader who wants to get lost in the joyful experience of an Indian wedding.

~ Bel

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for the arc!

——-

One word for this book: underwhelming.

The premise of this book was interesting- the company Manny works at and what situation made her want to be “more Indian.” I liked how each chapter started off a short breakup note to the company. It was new.

There were a few bollywood references that I liked but not enough to be like omg this book is amazing.

However, there’s nothing really in this book that pushes you to keep reading. There were various instances where I wanted to DNF the book because I got bored and certain moments that were just really cringe.

Exhibit A: “Masala Mama and Dosa Daddy”

You get to learn a little bit about Indian culture in this book, but a crash course to be Indian in a week - really? A culture that’s so many elements to it can be learned and implemented within oneself in such a short period of time? What Manny was taught in the book was nothing exceptional it’s things she could have googled. If this is going to be the premise of the book I would have at leash liked to see things that aren’t so basic and stereotypical.

Another thing I did not like - the ending. It was too rushed and it just felt like it got dropped on you.

Tbh, would not recommend.

I won’t lie, it took me a couple tries to get into Sari Not Sari, not because of any faults in the books but mostly because I didn’t think I would connect with the story.

It wasn’t till months after receiving a review copy and going on a lil spiritual journey of my own did it click.

It wasn’t representation of my Desi experience, but it was an look into an experience many Desi diasporic kids have growing up. Even then I found flashes of my life in the book here and there. Between the beautiful dance sequences and intricate designs of bridal mendhi I found parts of myself.

And that’s all I could’ve hoped for from the book, so I’m thankful to Sonya for putting this out there for all the Desi women looking to connect with themselves and find a love that’s worthy of them.

As a main character, Manny is very self-assured and comfortable in her own skin. She has a wonderful fiancé, great friends, and a successful business in the market of helping people break-up. As an only child to immigrant parents, Manny is the epitome of the American dream.

Until a magazine cover edit throws her sideways, and she questions her authentic self.

Sammy and Adam are great sounding boards for how Manny has chosen to live her life. When she's asked to provide a temporary break-up for Sammy, and Adam encourages looking forward, not back at her roots, Manny opts to learn more about her Indian heritage.

Sari, Not Sari has an incredible ensemble of supporting characters but the romance story suffers significantly. This story has a great premise, but the story needed more focus on the romance. The development of Manny and Sammy's relationship feels incredibly rushed. This book seems written in a way that would work for a movie.

This was a fun romcom.

While is was not the most realistic story - a company that makes money from breaking up with people? An Indian woman not knowing ANYTHING about her culture? A romance and proposal in less than a week? All of these things had me shaking my head.

However, I do not expect my romcom to be realistic. I want a fun, fast, instant love. I want laughs and colour. I want joy and tears and this book delivered all these things. It was a fun fast read, and I found myself crying at the end. That is the mark of a book that at least connects with me in some way.

I loved the laying of Manny's present with her past and how she had actually had more than a few things in common with the Patel's.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for my copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

Sari, Not Sari is a fun, light read centering around finding your place in the world. Manny Dogra is a high-powered CEO that has spent her whole life being more "American" than her native Indian roots. But when a magazine cover lightens her face, robbing her of her heritage, Manny decides to accompany client Sammy Patel to his brother's wedding to find out the true meaning of being Indian.

This closed door, friends to lovers forced proximity romance was a fun read. I truly enjoyed Manny's character and was rooting for her to find her happiness and where she belongs. There was a super good twist that had me somewhat shocked, but made the book for me. I also appreciated Manny's grief journey after losing both of her parents recently. I completely despised her fiancé throughout the book, but was hoping for more chemistry between Manny and Sammy. They had good, tender moments together, but their declarations of love at the end felt rushed and a little unbelievable. I was hoping for more romance in the book.

love heartwarming love stories featuring travel and large, crazy families, so I thought Sari Not Sari would be my cup of chai. Unfortunately, despite the enjoyable setting, promising concept and entertaining side characters, it just wasn’t for me. This could be because I just couldn’t connect with Manny, who, despite being the daughter of Indian immigrants, was raised to be completely ignorant of her cultural background. While I can sort of understand and sympathize with how her parents’ tragic past led to this decision, it would’ve been more interesting if Manny’s journey of rediscovery was more fleshed out instead of taking a backseat to a whirlwind romance. Speaking of romance, while I liked seeing Sammy and Manny grow closer as they discovered they had more in common than they thought, I did not buy into their ending as a couple. Their relationship felt rushed, and it made me I feel cheated of what could’ve been a wonderful story of not only hate to friends to love, but of family as well. I guess this is the downside of trying to capture the magic of a Bollywood rom-com in less than 400 pages.

I’m still hedging between a 3 or 3.5 coz I can’t decide.

These days, I really need incentive to pick up a contemporary romance novel but when I saw the gorgeous cover of this desi debut and that punny title, I thought I should surely give it a try. And while I’m still accumulating my thoughts, this book turned out to be a good experience.

The writing took me a while to get into because because the character interactions felt a bit stilted and superficial in the beginning but now that I think about it, that may have been intentional. But when the setting changes from work to a desi wedding, I definitely found it easy to breeze through the pages. However limited to aesthetics Indian culture was here, I can’t deny that I still enjoy reading it in any form in books and this one had some gorgeous descriptions of clothes, yummy food, lots of Bollywood references and even a dance to an item number. But since the theme was about the main character trying to find out her inner Indian, I wish she had the opportunity to learn atleast some of the meaning behind the various wedding traditions instead of being told some common superstitions. There is a little twist in this tale too which gave full on Kabhie Kabhie vibes and that made me slightly nostalgic for that lovely movie. I was also quite grateful that the couple of instances of misunderstandings were resolved quickly because I hate the miscommunication trope in romance novels.

I also can’t resist making some comments about the main character’s business in the book. It’s called Breakup and their work is to send breakup emails for their clients and include many other packages including getting ready to date again, finding closure etc. To go with this theme, we get snippets of emails that Breakup receives from their clients at the beginning of every chapter and I thought they were both funny and cringy and sad. Is it that I’m too old and having married early has made me incapable of comprehending it all, but if these emails are kind of an indication of the online dating scene in the current times, I can totally see why people are having so much difficulty finding fulfilling relationships these days.

That isn’t to say there weren’t some hiccups - the punny title aside, the desi puns felt a bit overdone, especially when said by a white guy; I’m usually very forgiving with most romance tropes but even I have to say this was quite too instalovey even though I could see the connection. One thing I remember cringing at was when a white gay character says that a person looking/not looking Indian enough is the same as not being able to identify a person’s sexual orientation just by their looks - it’s not even an apples to oranges to comparison, and frankly, color of the skin does matter in the way a person is perceived in our world and dismissing it with such a bad comparison was tasteless.

Coming to the characters, we only get one POV, which is our girlboss CEO Manny Dogra. She is a go getter and ambitious and definitely has the chops to take her nationally popular business to the world stage. But she has achieved this by working her ass off to forget her grief about losing her parents, and this attitude is definitely encouraged by her fiancé Adam. But I was in slight disbelief initially about how disconnected and ignorant she was about Indian culture or her roots in general, and didn’t even seem interested to learn anything about it - I’m not a first generation American, so I don’t have the experience of wanting to assimilate but I guess this can be true for some families. While the incident mentioned in the synopsis is a wake up call, I still felt her decision to attend a desi wedding and learn Indian culture was a bit too impulsive and out of character for her. I did like that she was able to experience the love of a huge family and the chaos and togetherness that Indian weddings can bring.

Since we don’t get Sammy’s POV, I have to piece together my feeling based on the conversations he has with Manny. He seemed like a kind and compassionate person who loved his family, but also made many assumptions about them and was making life changing decisions based on those assumptions. I thought his connection with Manny was genuine and I could totally see a genuine friendship building between them but maybe I just didn’t feel the falling in love part. However, they do seem good for each other so I guess that’s fine.

I really liked the whole Patel family with their nosiness as well as love and support. While the author does portray some of the issues that can exist with inclusion and acceptance in the community, she also showed that there are many others who are equally supportive and just want the best for their children and family. Sammy’s sister Manisha was boisterous and fun, their mom was slightly nosy but loving (I wish she didn’t have those couple of throwaway fatshaming lines) and their dad turned out to be the surprise romantic of the lot. Manny’s friends Anjali and Rob were definitely her found family and I liked the bond they shared with each other. Anjali is a definite godsend and her cousin Aliyan lit up the pages with his sass. There’s one scene where Aliyan introduces Manny to the underground desi drag scene and I found that very moving, especially because recently I’ve been seeing a lot of videos of famous Indian Drag Queen Rani KoHEnur, and I liked seeing this sliver of positive representation for them in the book. We never do get to meet Sammy’s girlfriend Lisa but her actions definitely speak enough about her. Manny fiancé Adam on the other hand seemed more suited for a business partnership than as a husband.

In the end, this was an enjoyable debut which took me a while to get into but found its footing later on. While the instalove element may not be for everyone and there were some hiccups on the way, I definitely enjoyed the second half of the book during the wedding and it was fun to be part of all the Patel family shenanigans.

I had high hopes for this book but at the end of the day it was so poorly edited I could hardly trudge my way through. From inconsistencies in the timeline to using the characters names in nearly every sentence to the point where it became grating (Manny was used 235 times and Sammy was used a whopping 433 times). I love romance novels and am used to the cadence and language used, however this read as amateur.

I love multicultural reads, especially since I’m Asian. I often find them relatable to an extent. So I was excited to read this one.

Unfortunately, it fell kinda flat for me. I loved the openers for each chapter, and wished it came with an answer. I feel like it would have made for a much funnier read. Personally, I thought it was slow. I’m an impatient reader, so I think that part was a me thing.

The relationship between Sammy & Manny could have happened sooner in my opinion and felt rushed. I don’t know. Again, maybe it’s just me, but I wasn’t convinced of their connection. *sigh* Mood reader struggles?

I think others will enjoy this more than I did, I think perhaps my personal taste and expectations got in the way.

I’m conflicted on how I feel about this story.

Initially I really wanted to DNF, I just wasn’t feeling the whole Indian guy wants to temporarily break it off with his white girlfriend so he doesn’t have to introduce her to his family. I fully understand I was kind of triggered by this as I have been through a similar scenario. So I decided to keep reading and give it a chance.

As I delved more into the story I enjoyed many of the side characters. I’ll admit most of them were kind of caricatures versus true characters, and I called the reveal with Sammy’s dad from the first time he was introduced. However I could lose myself in it enough to find some enjoyment out of it. That said, I do not feel like this was written for a culturally aware audience. There were a lot of accurate moments, but some of it was harmful stereotypes and I found myself cringing a little. I know stereotypes are often wrapped in some basis of truth, however I’d love to have seen an own voices author break free of those stereotypes versus perpetuating them.

My biggest issues were with the ending and the treatment of Lisa. We were somehow supposed to believe that after a week of knowing each other, where she spent more time with his family than him, that they fell in love and are now engaged?!? I mean even insta love stories take longer than a week lol particularly when they were both already in relationships.

People were often mad at Manny for lying or withholding info and yet she was forgiven less than a day later by every person just because. No true resolutions or reasonings given, nothing was her fault. The author also spent a lot of time continuously having Sammy talk about loving Lisa and then listing all the reasons she’s incredibly wrong and awful for him. Then the author relegated his feelings to “owing her his life” and THEN she decides to make Lisa the villainess… all very convenient. I also had big issues with Manny’s relationship with her fiancé Adam.

Overall this felt indulgent. I do think there is an audience for this story though. The premise had some excellent promise, I just feel like the fleshing out of the story lost its way. This is a debut novel and as a debut I see the promise of the authors storytelling. This is why I give it 3 stars.

Yikes. Okay, I gotta start this off with mentioning that I am white and would encourage you to read reviews by others who are Indian. But because I was given the opportunity to read an eARC of this book via NetGalley (thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster), here’s my review:

At first, I was enjoying the book and Manny’s journey to explore her Indian heritage, but noticed the several problematic aspects of whitewashing (which yes is a plot point, but it just didn’t really sit well with me for some reason??), inappropriate cultural appropriation from white characters in the book, and caricaturistic LGBTQ characters. Also, the premise of Manny’s business is interesting… but also just made several plot aspects completely predictable.

SPOILER SECTION: The ending. Oh, dear goodness, the ending. I guessed the “twist” with Sammy’s dad early on and I don’t get why that wasn’t weirder, or why Manny didn’t discuss that with Sammy? But the last few chapters were terrible. Sammy exploding on Manny for keeping the breakup inquiry from him after he literally told her not to tell him anything bad because he was happy, and also it breaks confidentiality? Also, why the hell are so many people using this service? Who the heck breaks up with someone over email? (Especially Manny ending the engagement via her service, which I predicted right when it was revealed she had a fiancé). Speaking of fiancés, she was literally engaged and proceeded to get engaged to another man that she literally knew for a week, and then broke up with her original fiancé via email. Maybe she should be single and explore her identity more on her own and deal with her grief over losing her parents since she’s clearly been avoiding it? Worst ending ever. Changing her engagement to an Indian man isn’t going to solve all her problems.

The writing itself wasn’t terrible, but certain major aspects of the plot really needed reworked. I feel like this could’ve been a really great story, but it just didn’t sit right with me. I proceeded to check out other reviews from some Indian readers for their opinions and found that I wasn’t alone. I encourage you to read their thoughts on the representation of culture, since I am not Indian and cannot comment on such aspects. I did like the message that was clearly trying to be portrayed (that there are different ways to be Indian/there’s not a right or wrong way to be Indian) but that just made the scene where Sammy’s sister freaks out on her for the magazine cover so much more confusing and infuriating. The ending was just so rushed and made no sense.

Thank you to Net a galley for this arc. Light read, short and sweat and enjoyed this and the author’s writing!