Yasmine and Joe are getting married.
Joe raised by his feminist mother Harry and Yasmine by her overbearing father and mild mannered mother.
Before the wedding cultures, personalities, sexualities and the past collide.

I can appreciate the hype around this book. Unfortunately I found it rather dry, long winded a at times quite slow. This book never pulled me in.

Like everyone else I have been waiting along time for a new book by Monica Ali. This one is worth the wait, I can't really think of a contemporary subject she doesn't tackle, and yet the writing doesn't seem to be just ticking the boxes. The characters are well drawn, compelling and believable.

This is Monica Ali's best book since Brick Lane and a close second to that title. I loved the twists and turns of the plot and the characters were well developed.

I knew I really enjoyed this book, but every time I think of it, my appreciation grows. Ali wrote extremely intimate portrayals of many people and many more relationships without ever overwhelming or confusing them. Love Marriage is a rich family drama that explores complex secrets, shame and connection through vulnerability just as any rich family drama should.

The family drama in this book is out of control! I really couldn’t see where this story was going until we got there. The Ghoramis seemed to be the perfect family until it all blew up in their faces.
I really liked Yasmin as a main character but she did seem to be really immature at some points although I appreciated that she finally owned up to her shortcomings at the end of the book. I think I actually breathed a sigh of relief when Joe realizes that his relationship with his mom isn’t actually as good as he always thought it was.
Definitely pick this one up if you’re looking for a little drama in your next read, I was hooked from start to finish!

Delighted to include this title in the May edition of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section Zoomer magazine. (see review at link)

Love stories come in all shapes and sizes. These are especially humorous when told through the eyes of author Monica Ali in her character-driven and entertaining new book, Love Marriage. What an absolute gem this novel is!! Funny and heartwarming, this British novel follows med student Yasmin Ghorami as her wedding day to fellow doctor Joe approaches. Yasmin and Joe's families couldn't be more different, and fireworks go off- but not in the ways that you expect- when Yasmin's traditional Bengali family meet Joe's ultra-feminist mother.

Yasmin's life, her family and everything she has known spectacularly implodes with hilarity, teaching each person something important about themselves along the way. From Yasmin's strict doctor father to her black sheep brother, from the elderly patients and staff on Yasmin's ward to Joe's therapist, this novel hosts an excellent case of secondary characters. The primary issue at the heart of this novel is the different types of love that exist and it's central question: is love enough?

The book does run long at 500+ pages, but the author has so much to say one can hardly be mad at it. The characters are so well fleshed out and their struggles are so real and so complex, and I really appreciated the modern-day cultural representation and POVs. Yasmin's mother, Anisah, was by far my favourite character., and most of the book's funniest moments come from her interactions and growth.

Thank you to @simonschusterca for providing me an egalley in exchange for my review. LOVE MARRIAGE is available for purchase in Canada on May 3, 2022

This was an interesting read about a looot of different (and heavy) topics. I can’t really pinpoint one specific idea of what this book was really about, other than the recurring theme that life is complicated.

I really liked the different characters. It felt like I got to know them on a deeper level. All of them had pretty intense flaws and baggage, but I think that was the point. I really don’t think there’s a character in this book that you’re supposed to love. The rawness of life was really portrayed effectively here (which is great if you’re in the mood for that…not so great if you want to read in order to escape from life’s disappointments as opposed to reading all about them).

I did feel that this book was too long, and there were many times where I almost didn’t want to keep reading because it felt like it was dragging. Some of the writing did not exactly gel with me either.

Overall, I liked this one but there were a few things that kept me from loving it. I can see how it would be a favourite for some people and not meant for others!

Thank you so much to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC. This comes out on May 3rd! I have posted this review on Goodreads and on my Bookstagram account (@janinesbookcorner).

I have just read Love Marriage by Monica Ali.

First, I would like to thank NetGalley, Author Monica Ali, and Simon & Schuster Canada, for my advanced copy to read and review.

This is a book of family, love, turmoil, trust and two cultures trying to bond together, and takes place in London.

This book unfortunately was not a good fit for me. I just could not get into the rhythm of the story or connect with the characters at all.

For me, it was far too long, and I really struggled to finish it.

It is well written, it just did not capture me

#NetGalley

3.5
I can't decide if I loved it or not? Parts of it felt flat to me, others bright and full of life. I feel like things happened quickly, too fast or not at all.

Overall, I was happy to have read it, I found some of the plot points very interesting and a lot of pondering myself about self discovery.

This is my fourth book by Monica Ali and I am reminded of the wonderful characters she builds.

Love Marriage begins when newly engaged couple Yasmin and Joe bring her parents over to meet his feminist, writer, intellectual mother, Harriet.

Yasmin’s parents are Indian born and share that they have a love marriage. Shaokat, Yasmin’s father, a practicing general practitioner in England, came from a very poor background. Anisah, his wife, came from a well to do family. Her father funded Shaokat’s education.

Harriet likes to see herself as open-minded and progressive when it comes to sexuality, family, culture and ideology. She loves her son, Joe, to a fault and can’t see the lack of boundaries as problematic.

Yasmin and Joe are both doctors working at a local hospital. We are invited into the inner workings of Yasmin’s experiences as she completes her session in elder care.

Ali’s writing flows so vividly. The character arcs are believable and whole. The reader gets to know smaller details about each character while still having a good sense of the overall figure. This is an emotional book at times but it is not sad. The author expertly weaves a number of storylines to an ending that feels actualized.

Tackling tokenism, micro aggressions, trauma, identity and purpose in a quiet way, I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience and would highly recommend this book to those who adore literary fiction and family stories. If you are looking for suspense and drama then this might not be the book for you.

I have also just learned that this book is being made into a tv series. I do hope it will be available in Canada when it is complete.

Thank you @netgalley and @scribnerbooks / @simonschusterca for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. Love Marriage publishes May 3, 2022 in Canada and the US.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I have a feeling I read 'Brick Lane' when it first came out, although I can't remember anything about it. I was expecting this to be 'literary fiction', but somehow I didn't really notice the writing. There was plenty of plot going on, and in many ways it was more like 'women's fiction'. The immature siblings Yasmin and Arif grew up, their mother came into her own, Joe got to the bottom of his sex addiction with the help of a therapist, people were unfaithful to one another, people explored their sexuality, babies were born etc etc. The short chapters swept the narrative along, and I was never bored, although my favourite sections were the ones on the geriatric ward where Yasmin dealt with her elderly patients and her snake of a boss Professor Shah.

I found the character arcs of Yasmin's parents unlikely - her mother in particular seemed to have a personality change - and the 'big reveal' of the origins of their 'love marriage' was less personal to them than I had been expecting and therefore disappointing. I'm not sure this book will really stay with me.

I can appreciate the scope Monica Ali was aiming to capture in writing the challenges of a traditional family with traditional values, against the emergent identity of their daughter and her marriage. Unfortunately this read was just not for me. For lovers of immensely detailed narratives with multiple characters, this would be an excellent read! Ali dives into thoughtful details, painting a holistic and comprehensive view of a family torn between tradition and modernity. The writing was eloquent, and flowed perfectly, however ultimately too character driven with a plot that advanced at a slower pace for my personal reading tastes! Thank you for the opportunity!

Monica Ali as usual is an absolute delight! This book kept me on my toes till the end. I started being irritated by all the characters and ended up crying for all of them 😭 i will recommend this one for a long time to come. I do hope to see an on screen adaptation worthy of the book! 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This family drama is centered around the engagement of two doctors, Yasmin and Joe, and starts out explaining Yasim’s relationships with each member of her immediate family. Her embarrassment and anxiety about the two families meeting and the culture clash she expects (and how her own family will appear to her future mother-in-law) was relatable abut also extremely frustrating. It made Yasmin’s character feel very young that in her mid-twenties she would still be so embarrassed of her parents, but the author did a good job of setting up the theme of shame through these relationships.

For the first quarter of this book, I was mostly frustrated and annoyed by Yasmin and just wanted to shout at her to get over herself and accept her family as they are. But the story developed in surprising ways, and I wasn’t expecting a lot of the turns that it took. The narrative moves between a few characters, and it was helpful to see the perspectives and traumas that impacted how each of them behaved and interacted with each other. I won’t pretend that I loved any of the characters, but this was definitely not due to the writing, and more to do with how realistic each of them was and how frustrating humans can be when navigating love and family and growth. I don’t want to leave any spoilers but the major thing I would change is that one of Yasmin’s relationships that builds in the book didn’t really have any sense of closure or idea of what might happen next which feels a bit unfinished.

Overall I highly recommend this read and loved that it questioned societal expectations and multiculturalism in new ways, with a perfectly ordinary backdrop that felt completely relatable and realistic.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

Sometimes our family stories are not what we think they are, and the stories we tell ourselves colour the truth. A fascinating look at two people from two very different families from two different cultures and how they affect each other’s lives. While I liked the book overall, it took me quite a while to get into it and I didn’t deeply connect with the characters.