The Bollywood Bride

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Synopsis

Ria Parkar is a Bollywood princess beloved by her fans, but her past is littered with emotional trauma linked to her mentally ill mother. At the age of seven, Ria was so psychologically broken that she'd retreated from the world and was unable to speak until she went to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousin Nikhil in Chicago. There she found solace with Vikram Jathar, another of Nikhil's cousins from the opposite side of the family, who befriended her. From then on, she spent carefree summers with Niki and Viky in the Windy City. As she blossomed into her teen years, Ria and Viky became inseparable and much more than just friends. They fell madly in love and were planning a future together. But the death of Ria's father set in motion a series of events that destroyed everything.

After making a deathbed promise to her father and being offered a chance to become a Bollywood star soon after, Ria made a fateful decision that left Vikram believing she'd sold out their love for fame and fortune. Just as it appears all her past secrets might be brought to light by an overeager paparazzi, Ria is invited to Nikhil's wedding in Chicago, where she'll have to see Vikram again after ten long years and confront everything that happened between them. Once she sees him, all the old feelings are still there, bubbling beneath the surface, but he's deeply angry with her and dating someone else. The more they see of each other, though, the less they can deny their love still exists, and soon they're giving in to their passion. But Ria still has many unresolved issues that she believes will hurt Viky in the long run. Can she find the courage to face the past that she's so zealously guarded and really start living before it's too late and she's made another irrevocable decision?

Review

The Bollywood Bride is a contemporary romance/women's fiction story that is the second in Sonali Dev's loosely connected Bollywood series. Ria is a Bollywood star with a series of traumatic events in her past, linked to her mother's mental illness, that have shaped the person she is today. Following the first of these events, when she was only seven years old, she psychologically withdrew and was unable to speak, so she was sent to Chicago to temporarily stay with her aunt, uncle, and cousin Nikhil. There Ria was befriended by young Vikram, a cousin from the other side of Nikhil's family (he and Ria aren't related). The two became inseparable, and after going back to boarding school in India, Ria always looked forward to her summer visits to the States and seeing Viky again. By their teen years, their relationship took a romantic turn. It seemed like they would be together forever, and they'd started making plans for their future. But while Vikram was abroad, a second major traumatic event sent Ria home to India, where she made a deathbed promise to her father, and when Vikram's mother discovered Ria's secrets, she demanded that Ria never see Viky again. At that same time, young, naive Ria chanced to meet a Bollywood director who wanted to cast her in his next film. Believing that she, too, would someday succumb to mental illness and not wanting to ruin Viky's life, she jumped at the chance to become a star, knowing the job would provide much-needed funds to make it possible to keep the promise she'd made to her father. However, in doing so, she broke Vikram's heart and left him believing that she'd sold out their love for fame and fortune. Ria hasn't seen Viky for ten years, but she's been invited to Nikhil's wedding and knows that Viky will be there, too. From the moment she sees him, all the love she's felt for him comes bubbling to life again. At first, Viky is still angry with her and also seeing someone else, but soon they can't stay away from each other. However, Ria only intends for it to be a temporary fling, and plans to leave him again once the wedding is over.

Ria has been through a tremendous amount of emotional pain and suffering in her twenty-eight years. The full extent of her trauma is revealed slowly throughout the story, so I don't want to say too much so as to not be spoilery. Suffice it to say, the happiest moments of her life were the summers spent with her family in Chicago and especially with Vikram, whose kindness and friendship helped her heal and find her voice again. Everything was great between them until the summer when Ria was eighteen. She'd finished school and was making plans for her future with Viky, but while he was away in South America, everything fell apart for her. I can't help thinking that if Vikram had been there, things might have been different, but since he wasn't, she had to navigate yet another traumatic incident mostly by herself. The amount of responsibility that was placed on her shoulders was a lot for anyone to manage, much less one so young. She was also verbally attacked by Vikram's mother and faced with the very real possibility that she, too, might one day succumb to the same mental illness that took her mother and grandmother from her. Thinking that Viky would be better off without her and desperately needing money to keep the promise she made to her father, she allowed Viky to think the worst and leapt at the chance to become a Bollywood star. Ria was a near-overnight sensation, but her stardom came with a price. When Nikhil invites her to his wedding, Ria almost doesn't go, but she knows she owes it to her cousin to be there for him on his big day. Seeing her Viky again is like a punch in the gut, but at first his anger and him having another girlfriend keeps her feelings in check. When Viky decides to risk it all on a second chance with Ria, though, she can't seem to say no. She thinks she can compartmentalize her love for him, enjoy what little time they have together, and still leave again when the wedding is over, but it nearly tears her apart to do so. Ria still thinks it's for the best and that she'll never see Viky again, but fate has other plans in mind.

Ria is an incredibly stubborn character, which I think is sometimes to her detriment, but she's a very complex person, too. I don't think I could have made the choices she did, but at the same time, I understood why she made them. In some ways, she had to be incredibly strong to walk away from Vikram, not once, but twice. However, IMHO she was also rather weak, because she didn't trust that their love would see them through no matter what happened. Because of that and the fact that she was basically making the choice for Vikram and not allowing him a say, I thought she was rather selfish. Simultaneously, though, one could view her as being selfless by protecting him from what she feared might happen to her--and by extension him--in the future. When she left Vikram a second time, I wanted jump into the story and tell her to just be honest with him about her fears and doubts and work through it. But in doing so, she caused herself a great deal of emotional suffering, so I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. I'm just glad that Vikram was finally able to get through to her so they could have the future they were always meant to share.

Basically the entire story is told from Ria perspective, so we only get acquainted with Vikram through her observations. Sometimes this can be a downside, but I didn't feel that it was here, because he's the type of guy who wears his emotions on his face and his heart on his sleeve. I loved the flashback scenes of Viky and Ria as kids and later as teenagers. It was obvious that they were soul mates from a very young age and that they shared a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. When Ria wasn't there when Viky returned home from South America, of course, he went looking for her with disastrous results. Believing that she'd abandoned their love just to become a star, he became disillusioned with life, but in another way, he also ended up finding and remaking himself. Now he's a brilliant entrepreneur whose inventions are actually helping people and he's very ethical in his practices, not wanting his creations to fall into the hands of greedy businesspeople who'll only want to make a profit off of them. When he sees Ria for the first time in ten years, he's obviously still very angry with her, but as the story progresses, it's easy to see that he's putting up armor to protect his heart that is still very much in love with her. Once they give in to their feelings, Viky showers Ria with unfettered affection and passion, and clearly can't get enough of her. It was also obvious that he was terrified of losing her again. He had to show a tremendous amount of patience and compassion to finally draw her out, get to the bottom of what was bothering her, and convince her that everything that she viewed as an obstacle could be overcome through their love.

The Bollywood Bride took me on an emotional roller-coaster ride from the sweetness of Ria and Viky's childhood scenes to the bitter heartbreak of their breakup to their reunion that eventually was full of love, romance, and passion to another breakup that resulted in a deep funk to finally coming full-circle and getting their happy ending. This might be too much melodrama for some readers, which could account for why this book has a middling rating on GoodReads, but I was fully invested in Ria and Viky's love story from the very first page and my attention never wavered as I patiently waited for them to find their way back to one another. I'm comfortable categorizing this book as a romance, but I think it also has women's fiction vibes. It covers some heavy material that explores the stigma of mental illness and how that can deeply affect a family's lives in unexpected ways. Also, while the ending is a happy one, it's not really a traditional HEA. Instead it's slightly more realistic in that they agree to let their love lead, while also acknowledging the potential difficulties that could lie ahead. Somehow none of this bothered me, though.

Even though Ria could be frustratingly stubborn in her thinking, I still always understood where she was coming from and why she felt that way, even if I didn't agree with all her decisions. I also deeply sympathized with everything she'd been through in her life. Vikram is just the sweetest guy who loves Ria so much that he doesn't want to live without her no matter what the future holds. These two were star-crossed lovers who were clearly meant for one another. There was just something about them that spoke to me and had me rooting for them from the very beginning. I'm also a sucker for angsty, slow-burn, and reunion romances, and this one had all three in spades. I enjoyed all the preparations for Nikhil's traditional Hindu wedding. I'm very interested in other cultures, so this was a lot of fun. The connections between this book and the first one are very minimal with barely a mention of the hero of the first book coming up, although it looks like Nikhil plays a major role in the next book, A Change of Heart. With two winners in a row, Sonali Dev has earned a spot on my favorite authors list, and I look forward to continuing the series soon.

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Sonali Dev

Themes

Beta Heroes
Friends Before Lovers
Reunion Stories
Tortured Heroines