Those Pricey Thakur Girls

In the hopes that upping my fannish productivity will up my productivity in other arenas today, here is my quick review of Those Pricey Thakur Girls for deepad's Anuja Chauhan reading club!

Set in 1980s Delhi, the novel primarily revolves around Debjani Thakur (secretly her father's favorite of his five alphabetically-named daughters), a brand-new English newsreader at DD who keeps clashing with investigative journalist Dylan Singh Shekhawat. While Dylan's stubborn unwillingness to uphold "state-sponsored propaganda" quickly gets him into hot water, it's the convoluted Thakur family dynamics that really make this book.

Unlike Chauhan's other two books, in which personal lives are swept up in larger sociopolitical currents, Those Pricey Thakur Girls weaves larger issues like the 1984 Sikh Massacre and freedom of the press into an intensely family-focused story. I personally appreciated the change, because I think family dynamics are probably Chauhan's best narrative strength. Also, there simply is no humor quite like the wacky family hijinks kind. I did have a bit of trouble with the POV shifts and the sheer size of the Thakur family/friend network at first, but as the story arcs progressed, things got less confusing.

The family drama and perspective changes do make the narrative drive in this book less direct than Battle for Bittora and The Zoya Factor; multiple perspectives obviously require multiple character arc resolutions. I found this a feature, not a bug- a thing that's annoyed me about some other romances I've read is that the main characters get together and the "side" characters... go off and something? (Who cares knows! Obviously their development is less important, whatever.) But in this story, the presence of every friend and family member seems both necessary and felt, even the ones off-screen. A key part of Dylan and Debjani's romance is getting to know each other through family and friends, which is one of those true to life processes I really appreciate reading about that I wish more romance writers would spend time on. Ahem. xD

eta; If you happen to be interested in buying/reading any of these books, there's an Anuja Chauhan box set available on the Con or Bust auction site!

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In other fannish news, I have:
- generated a KagaNigou (still unsubmitted because I'm still in tumblr avoidance mode... >.>)
- accidentally spawned a Dragon Age/KuroBase AU-verse solely on the basis of KagaNigou crackfic premises? Oops.

Things I have yet to accomplish: EVERYTHING ELSE. /o\ And now I'll be off to get on that (hopefully)...