I really wanted to like this because of the diverse representation. Age-gap romance, AAPI in Hollywood (a young Indian woman), themes of depression, suicide, and motherhood.
I think listening to this as an Audiobook could have affected my enjoyment some…Advika felt flat and even though the narrator tried to use voices and there were some unique audio effects, the accoutrements were not enough to improve my rating. 

I have certainly not outgrown the pleasure of celebrity gossip, and even though it felt like the author tried to make that plentiful, I didn’t feel anything extraordinary was done here. It seemed like she was trying to drive home the “Old White Men Bad” message, with a disguised Woody Allen metaphor. But we all know that drama, and the story became one predictable lesson after another. I can’t speak from any sort of experience but the themes fetishization of Asian and young women by rich old men in Hollywood has been poo-pooed before and while I certainly don’t condone it, I think it’s a bit too late to get on that soapbox.

My favorite characters were the dead sister and Olivia Advika’s best friend who were both droll and maybe I have too much fantasy experience but I wanted something wild to go down or at least care when the ball dropped. I also might have convinced myself this was going to be a romantic comedy story and it was just, in fact, a story about a woman gaining confidence and a backbone (is it bad that that’s boring to me😬?)

Anyway, interesting perspectives, cool setting, just something was missing to make me feel like this was groundbreaking or necessary to read.

If you read this as a silly, boppy, summer beach read, then it's decent. If you're looking for more than that, it doesn't really deliver. I will, however, counter what other reviewers are saying with regards to Advika and Julian - I can definitely imagine someone in their mid-20s marrying someone 40 years older, that doesn't seem unreasonable, even if it's after a quick whirlwind romance.

However, I do agree that the rest of the plot kind of got lost with the lack of further relationship development - problems starting immediately after Advika married Julian is what really made it hard to care about the rest of the book. If it had been a longer fairytale romance period, I think the rest of the book would have been more impactful. 

I loved the idea of the other wives and Advika uncovering their stories - however, the total disappearance of an entire wife from the timeline and failure to really talk about that kind of threw me off, as well as just feeling like Advika really should have acted sooner. She was set up for success and took so long to make her decisions. It also felt like the side characters were more interesting than Advika and yet they only appeared occasionally. I wish we'd seen more of Olive and the Oakies - they were too interesting to be shoved aside. 

I was absolutely hooked by this book, and read it in two days! This tale is almost a modern Bluebeard retelling, where Advika falls for rich, charming, powerful Julian and is told not to look into his past wives. I liked the clever way the red flags about Julian were woven into the start of the story, and how Advika is presented as a flawed, but understandable protagonist. I loved Advika's friends and the supporting cast! I'd love to see this novel optioned for a movie or limited series! 
Wheelhouses: Hollywood glamour, toxic relationship, Bluebeard retelling, woman uncovering the truth, friends caring for each other, people in their mid 20s still trying to find themselves.

I liked this book much more than other people who wrote reviews. I didn’t find it lighthearted at ALL—the POV character is deeply unhappy, guilty, and grieving for a lot the book. When she falls for a kind of fairytale that ends up being not what it seems, it felt extremely on brand for the kinds of decisions that people make to avoid dealing with their actual problems. I don’t think that Advika is naive. I think she is a young woman, a child of immigrants who hasn’t adhered to the kinds of dreams they want her to have, who is grieving the death of her twin and the ways she feels she could have prevented it, and gets a kind of fairytale meet cute wirh a rich, much older producer. He has charm (even if the reader and her friends see through it,, haven’t we all made this mistake at least once?), money, fame, and he’s doing the thing she desperately wants to do—make movies. I thought the author did a great job of writing from this POV so that the reader often feels as disconcerted as the character herself does.

My favorite part was the way that finding out about her husband’s previous wives not only brought her into her own power, but back into relationship with the people who do actually care about her. The end of the book and the epilogue were a little soap opera-y, but I didn’t mind that.