Nithya, a vivacious, intelligent and driven college senior has always known what she has wanted: a successful career in medicine and the love of her family. She’s even come to terms with the idea of an arranged marriage, a tradition her conservative Indian family has held up for thousands of years.
When a night of partying puts her on a collision course with danger, Nithya’s entire life … life changes.
Enter James St. Clair, the smart, challenging and heartbreakingly handsome American. As Nithya and James fall in love, she questions the future she and her parents have always planned.
Now, Nithya has a choice to make: become a doctor and a good Indian bride, or step away from her family and centuries of culture to forge her own path. The decision she comes to takes her on a journey that transforms how she sees her future, her relationships with loved ones, and how she learns to put herself back together when even her best-laid plans fall apart.
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Annika Sharma did an amazing job of pulling me into the Indian culture. Through her vivid descriptions of the life and customs Nithya had grown up, I was able to understand the duty she felt toward her family, as well as the uncertainty had about making her own choices. As an American, my duty has always been to myself, but reading Nithya’s story makes me see how things can be another way, how the world of arranged marriages can fit a need for some people that a love marriage wouldn’t, and confirms that the right choice for one person, isn’t always the right choice for another. I’ve always known arranged marriages were still a common custom in some cultures, but I’ve never had such an in depth look at the process before. In The Rearranged Life, I was able to see things from a totally different perspective, and understand the mindset in a way I’d never thought possible.
For Nithya, “having a choice was never part of the bargain.” Her future has been sealed since she was young. She will be a doctor. She will marry an Indian man who has been pre-approved by her family. She will have little brown babies who will speak Telugu as their first language. She will follow all the customs and traditions as her parents and grandparents. The Rearranged Life is about a romance between an Indian girl and an American boy, but it’s also about much more than that. It’s about a young women who is trying to find herself within two different cultures, who is trying to balance her own happiness with that of her family’s, and who is suddenly faced with the question of what she wants her for future.
“For the first time in my life, I have serious doubt about the way my family has approached this for thousands of generations.”
She’s reached a fork in the road and must now decide which path is the best one for her, which is one of the things I really liked about this book. It was possible for me to understand how Nithya could be happy either way. I don’t believe in soulmates, and I don’t think there’s only one perfect fit for each person. Love takes hard work and dedication and compromise, and to me there was no right or wrong choice when it came to who Nithya chose to be with.
Nishanth is the kind of man Nithya’s parents have always pictured her with. Smart, driven, from a good family, and most importantly, Indian. Like Nithya, he is a blend of the traditional Indian culture and the Indian-American person she identifies with.
“It would be easy with me. We could be a part of both clubs together. You don’t have to choose one over the other with me.”
With him there would be no different. No translating customs or words or religious beliefs. But Nishanth is missing one important thing for Nithya: he isn’t James. Life with James would have more obstacles, and now Nithya is faced with whether or not her love for James will make the risk worth it in the end. While I could see happiness at the end of both roads, my American mindset was rooting for Nithya to choose her own path and go with love. Right or wrong, that’s the way I see the world. But the beauty of Annika Sharma’s story is that I suddenly was able to understand why Nithya might choose to take the path that would lead to Nishanth.
**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Nithya is a smart, college senior who knows what she wants and who she wants to be; to become a doctor and to help people. She is from India but was raised in America; she is a good person, loves her family and their culture, and has even come to terms with the idea of arranged marriages (well somewhat.) After attending a college party that goes almost terribly wrong, Nithya finds she has been saved, by a handsome, charming American named James St. Clair; and from the moment she meets him, she finds herself being inexplicably drawn to him. Nithya’s world and views completely change, and she’s torn between listening to her head and marrying an Indian like her family wants her to, or listening to her heart and being with an outsider whom she can’t help but fall for.
This story reminded me so much of the tv movie The Princess and the Marine; the foreign princess meets an American and they fall in love, in spite of her family’s upbringing and traditions. I love these stories of forbidden love, I love reading about different cultures. I really enjoyed this story of James and Nithya, how different their backgrounds are but how their love for each other is so universal. A wonderful read!
I would definitely recommend this debut novel, and hope to read more by this author!