Thank you to the publisher for allowing me advance access to this title. I really enjoyed reading this story and look forward to reading more from this author. As a reader, I am really motivated by character driven stories and I found myself quickly becoming immersed in these characters’ lives. Full review to come.

A marriage is supposed to bring two families together, and signal that the couple at the centre of the situation has plans together, whether of travel, children, careers, etc. Monica Ali uses the planning of a marriage and its reception to dissect two families, one Muslim Bengali-British, the other British, and their many secrets and lies that they keep from each other. And that ultimately cause major problems.

Yasmin Ghorami is a resident at a hospital, and is following in her father's footsteps. Her younger brother is drifting, and unable to find his place in the world, much to their father's frustration. Yasmin respects her father, but struggles to feel anything but embarrassment and frustration with her religious mother.

Yasmin is looking forward to marrying Joe Sangster, a doctor, in a 'love marriage', like her parents had. Almost immediately, Joe's too controlling and famous feminist icon mother Harriet and Yasmin's mother Anisah blow the couple's idea of a small wedding to pieces. Coupled with a blowout fight between her father and brother, and her mother decamping to Harriet's for weeks, many of the things Yasmin thought about her family come apart, including beliefs she held about herself.

Monica Ali tells an entertaining but painful story of a two families that much confront many of the assumptions and secrets they've held for years, colouring their aspirations and beliefs. I loved the way the 1st and 2nd generations of the families had to unpack so much about themselves over the course of this story. Ali also considers how gender, race, religion, and age all play into assumptions and actions, and though no one is particularly likeable in this story (except Rania and Anisah), I really enjoyed this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Simon & Shuster Canada for this ARC in exchange for my review.

I had an error with this one where it didn't work on my kindle for some reason and I couldn't get another copy. Not intrigued enough unfortunately to purchase it myself to review fully.

Yasmin and Joe, two doctors, who come from very different families, are engaged to be married. However, their relationship is not perfect, as both of them are keeping secrets that can change the direction of their lives.
This is a story about family drama more than it is a romance novel. It took me an embarrassingly long time to finish because I just couldn't get into it. There were so many storylines that it made my head spin. While some of the characters were intriguing, I just wasn't hooked from the beginning.

This was just okay for me. I can see what the author was trying to do with the plot, and in theory I love the idea, however this just didn’t quite do it. I think for me the main issue was the pace. The book seemed to move too slow for me in many parts, and I felt like there was too much wording/descriptions. If some of the wording was cute, the pace would have moved a bit quicker, and I think they would have made me enjoy reading this a bit more.

Overall, the book was okay. The plot was interesting enough, but it was a bit too slow for me.

This was my first novel by Monica Ali, and it took me quite awhile to get through. While I found the themes of sex addiction, infidelity, family pressures and such to be interesting, I found it took quite awhile for the story to actually get started. In addition, I found the very specific, technical language made it difficult for me to fully comprehend and stay engaged with the story at times. Overall, I would recommend the book to people who like a love story with some twists and turns, but enjoy reading at a slower pace.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

I struggled with this one. Which is unfortunate, because I wanted to like it. The premise sounded so interesting, but it just didn’t capture my attention. I’m sorry, but it was just so boring and bland for me.

I’m not sure if the final copy read the same way, but the writing was not for me.

A gorgeously-written emotional mine-field, so impeccably crafted these characters will sit with you, telling their stories and holding your heart, long after the final reading.

Told from alternating third-person POVs, the story opens us to the world of our main protagonist, Yasmin Ghorami, a London-based junior doctor of Bengali descent, twenty-six years old. Yasmin is so disconnected from her own needs, a virtual “stranger to herself”, and so deeply judgmental of those around her (in particular, her strangely unsettling family) that, as fascinating as she is to unpack, she is hard for the reader to love.

Yet Yasmin is loved, deeply, by her endearing and under-appreciated mother, Anisah (as lovingly-drafted a character as one is likely to meet between the pages), and her somewhat blankly-beautiful fiancée Dr. Joe, with his “good clean linen-cupboard scent” and his fringed-blond look, “like the hero of an old black-and-white movie”.

Joe’s mother, Harriet Sangster, a free-spoken feminist writer and professor, living in her “discreetly sumptuous Georgian terrace”, (our second third-person POV), is a sharply decisive woman, with eyes “like the sky on a scorching day”, and a set of mannerisms guaranteed to get under your skin with their blatant narcissism.

As we get to know the force that is Harriet (and find, despite her harshness, a vulnerability that is undeniably endearing), like beams of brilliance radiating outward from her influence we come to understand the looseness of the boundaries holding those around her stable, including the enigma that is her son Joe, and the trappings of te world Yasmin occupies.

Without giving the plot away (no spoilers here), it’s clear for these characters that “life (indeed) is not simple”. For love, it seems, can encompass equally measures of “leather and peppermint”, suffocating boredom, shame and rage, tenderness and the “furious pleasures of intimacy”.

And threaded throughout it all, as Yasmin (and those that surround her) may or may not be lucky enough to discover, the compassion and connection that must be anchored within to give life, and the love it seeks, ultimate meaning.

A beautifully-incandescent read, deeply poignant and a rare literary treat, this book unquetsionably earns a place as one of the year’s current favorites for this reader.

A great big thank you to #NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

I received an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher for a review of this book.

At the beginning, I really wasn't enjoying this book. I didn't really like the characters and it was dragging. It did pick up and get a bit better farther into the book but overall it was just ok. It contains some pretty screwed up people and family relationships. Not my thing.

Love Marriage by Monica Ali

A family drama filled with social commentary about two families connected through an engagement, trying to understand one another. Yasmin, a resident doctor is recently engaged to another resident, Joe, son of a prominent feminist. The book opens with the two families getting together for dinner, meeting for the first time. From there we are immersed in a wide cast of characters’ lives, with alternating points of view.

I am generally a big fan & reader of family sagas, so I was excited for this one. Parts of this I absolutely loved. The characters were often richly realized, full of depth and nuance. Yasmin’s mother Anisah was a favourite. We start with a fuzzy picture or idea of each character but by the end we have such greater understanding of how they got to where they are in life. The depictions of the different types of relationships were fantastic - Yasmin’s parents, Harriet & her son Joe, Yasmin and her career. Some of the topics explored were very illuminating and portrayed very clearly including microaggression and racism.

There was so much in this book. The book was very long. I am saying that as someone who loves a thick literary fiction or family drama. There was a lot of detail and side characters/plots that felt somewhat unnecessary (such as the therapist POV). Likewise, Yasmin was undergoing a lot of self reflection and analysis of what she wants or doesn’t want in life & love and I found her continuous inner dialogue to be a bit tiresome.

Overall, I did really enjoy the book as a whole, and the social commentary was artfully done. There’s so much to reflect on and discuss in this book. I would have enjoyed this more if it was more succinct. I would recommend for those that are fans of family dramas and like a book that has a lot to sink your teeth into content-wise. Many thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada, Scribner and NetGalley for access to an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It is available now!

Love Marriage by Monica Ali was a rather disappointing read for me. The beginning was humorous, but quickly the story went downhill from there.

Love Marriage is about a young woman, Yasmin and her Muslim bengalese family who emigrated from India. They moved to London, England where her dad works as a medical doctor. Yasmin is a junior doctor and engaged to her Caucasian fiancé Joe, who is also a doctor. What is very apparent is that Joe and Yasmin come from very different cultures, class and neighbourhoods. But despite the odds being stacked against them, they really try to make a go of their relationship. Along the way all kinds of drama and trauma ensues including culture and political clashes, unplanned pregnancy, therapy, sex addiction, infidelity and rape.

I think I would have enjoyed the story more if the author didn’t drag on about unnecessary details and characters. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters in the book, except perhaps Yasmin’s Mum. I think there was just too much going on and for too long. Now there were a few positive moments in the book but they were overshadowed by too much detail and disorganization and length of the story. So I’m sorry to say Love Marriage was not for me. I gave it 2 1/2 stars but rounded up to 3.

Thank you so much to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for my arc of Love Marriage in exchange for my honest review.

thank you for the arc! it was my first time reading a monica ali novel and i found this one to be kinda long??? but also really interesting and intriguing. it took me a while to finish it, i'm not sure why. but i'm glad i had the chance to read it.

This is a highly relatable story of family, love, marriage and the complications that come with all of it. It’s long but worth the read.

I'm sad to say that I was actually a bit disappointed by this book! I was really looking forward to a book about a woman who is trying to please her Indian parents while not being part of an arranged marriage. The premise was good, and the other sub-stories/plots were also interesting, such as the brother who can never please his father, the boyfriend with a sex addiction, the sexually open and speaks-her-mind mother of the groom, and the medical intern trying to figure out if being a doctor is what she really wants. If you know me, you know that this book sounds like my jam! But it wasn't. I'm not sure if it was the short chapters that kind of jumped all over the place, the excessive number of characters that are not fully developed or the fact that it had a little too much of everything and not enough of the most important story lines. It also may have just been a little too long. It is one of those 400+ page books that might have been better capped at just under 300. I recently saw a comment on instagram where someone described books as "read if you can" and I think that is the perfect description for this book. It's not terrible by any means, but it didn't quite live up to it's potential. 4/5 stars from me! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

A great book that shows cultural diversity along with a twist of mystery.
Engaging story and a fast read. It also has a political satire.
Great book to recommend to anyone liking family drama and cultural diversity reads.

An engrossing novel that plunges the reader fully into the world and the lives of its flawed characters. The author examines in a breathtakingly humane manner how these characters came by their flaws; gentle, non-judgmental limning of emotions and actions in deft, supple prose. I was captivated from the first chapter and just couldn’t put it down until I finished.

The story takes place in London. Yasmin is a young Muslim doctor engaged to Joe, a handsome, charming, non-Muslim doctor. Their two families are about to meet for the first time, at a dinner at Joe’s mother Harriet’s grand Georgian townhouse. There’s very little about Harriet (Harry) that’s not grand—she’s a feminist activist, an author, a university lecturer in demand on the lecture circuit and TV, etc—and Yasmin is mortified about the possibility that her Gujurati immigrant parents will embarrass her in front of posh Harry. And so we begin.

There are secrets and lies everywhere, and they gradually begin to come to light as many things unravel over the coming months and as Yasmin and Joe’s wedding is postponed. Families fly apart in painful (but achingly authentic) ways. Yasmin learns to see her parents and her brother in new ways. Joe does the agonizing work of uncovering, in therapy, the roots of a thorny behavioural problem.

Really beautifully told. I was so invested in having things work out for all the characters, even the prickliest or annoying ones. Gorgeous!

I was very interested in the premise but but unfortunately it failed to capture my attention. I did not finish the book.

3.75/5
Fiction, 432 pages
No Spoilers Review

I was originally attracted to this book due to a curiosity in cross-cultural marriage and was interested in seeing what obstacles would arise and how they would be overcome. I very quickly realized, however, that this book covers a lot more ground than I had expected.

I did enjoy reading about the relationship between Yasmin and Joe, the volatility involved and how Yasmin was forced to re-evaluate things. I did, however, find that the story really branches off from the relationship to include their parents and their co-workers.

I recognize this as an attempt to introduce additional subject matter to the story. Unfortunately, each of the topics are large and fairly complex, and this left me feeling that none of the topics were explored in depth. As such, I felt like there were significant portions of the story that I could simply have done without. I would have preferred a less encompassing story that had more focus.

Things I liked:
The main plot/storyline
All the drama/volatility/realism in the relationship
The research that obviously went into the book
Things I didn’t like:
The book tried to tackle too many loaded subjects
Parts of the book felt like they could have been better focused
I had difficulty associating with the characters

This book/story wasn't what I expected, or what I was hoping for, so I didn't get as much enjoyment out of it as I had hoped. That being said, this wasn't a bad read, and does have some great parts to it. As such, I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in cultural clashes and romance.

I went into this book mostly blind but curious about the title. I find the concept of of a “love marriage” as opposed to an arranged one fascinating; and wondered what the author would do with it. I was not disappointed. Monica Ali is an adept writer and observer of life, love, and culture.
Yasmin is engaged to Joe. She comes from a fairly traditional Bengali family. He is from upper crust London. The families seem likely to clash, but what comes about is much more interesting. Add Joe’s infidelity and Yasmin’s beginning to question everything..and you have the makings for a great book.

This is a book I was unable to finish. I tried but I guess it was not the right time in my life to read this one. I am sorry I cannot give a better review.