I ignored every warning bell that went off in my head when I decided to pick this book up. I've had too much experience with those in diaspora to not know what this woman's version of a "progressive" character would be like, so I was apprehensive about Nikki even before I started reading this. She was insufferable from the beginning. Her repeatedly referring to herself as a ~modern~ girl was tacky AF and gave me serious second-hand embarrassment, and it was obvious that the author had at least partly based her little heroine on herself. Nikki's placement as the main character was probably one of its worst offences, because she never grows as a person, mainly due to the arrogance on the author's part who intended for her, an immature, self-satisfied 20 year-old, to serve as an example of what all South Asian women should aspire to be like. The widows were the most well-rounded group of characters in this book but that seemed almost accidental on the author's part, who exposes her own ignorance by failing to understand how it is Nikki who is sheltered, not them.

This whole book is basically jerking off material for white(washed) women. This book paints Nikki as heroic for "liberating" those poor widows, and it is so strikingly similar to the way stories about white saviours are presented. Not to mention how all the men here are depicted as one dimensionally oppressive and violently misogynistic in exactly the same way that white women think of brown men. As far as I am concerned, white women and Indian women from western countries are all cut from the same cloth. It is not a white woman's place to appoint herself their saviour, but it is not yours either. South Asians living in diaspora face a completely different set of problems than those who don't and vice versa, so I don't see why either should be allowed to speak over the other. The issue of casteism is never brought up or acknowledged, especially in regards to arranged marriages, despite the fact that gender and caste go hand in hand when it comes to this practise.

Jaswal's paper-thin, racist feminism was pretty heavy-handed too, like oh Nikki's only job experience was as a FEMINIST writer and the other innocent, dead girl was also part of the same FEMINIST group. Not only does she doubt our ability to sympathise with anyone who isn't explicitly feminist, but she almost seemed to imply that the life of a "modern" woman is worth more than that of someone who isn't. All in all, this book places far too much importance on feminism as an identity. 

I initially enjoyed reading snippets of the stories the widows wrote, but they dragged the story after a while and I began to skip them, which I almost never do. Seeing a fluent English speaker attempt to speak broken Punjabi was a nice change from how it typically goes. The author never stooped to mock anyone's limited command of a language, whether it be English or Punjabi. I don't know if I ever consciously picked up on why so many Sikh men and women have Singh or Kaur respectively as surnames, so I liked that she included an explanation for that. This book does a decent job I think of showing how women, including and especially older women from conservative backgrounds, also have private lives of their own as well as sexual and emotional needs. Though it sometimes felt like too many things in this story revolved around physical desires.
 
The writing in this novel grew progressively weaker as the story went on, however. The chapters would end all abruptly and the transition between scenes was bad even for a debut novel. My already low opinion of this book was lowered further by the predictability of the plot. I mean, god, what was with the stupid boyfriend storyline? Its inclusion in this book was so wholly unconnected from the rest of the story that it felt pointless. I was expecting him to turn out to be somehow connected to Maya's plot, but no. And seriously, THAT was his big secret? REALLY? It was the first thing that I thought of and immediately dismissed it because I thought it was too obvious.

Oh and..

"My parents gave me a name that Americans could pronounce as well. They were forward-thinkers in that regard."

Ah but of course, such backwards thinking on my parents' part to not name me Becky.