Dulhaniyaa

This sweet and sometimes action-filled story follows a young woman returning home to her family in Mumbai to get married in an arranged marriage. However when she meets her dance instructor her conviction to finally acquiesce to her family's desire wavers and she will have to decide if her happiness is more important than her mother's approval.

My favorite part of this story is its cultural focus and the atmosphere it builds. Particularly the focus on food and the descriptions of it, as well as the feeling of the city really helped draw me into the story and follow Esha's story with heightened interest. I also adored the inclusion of classic Indian movies and romantic stories, as well as the many cultural references and untranslated words and phrases. Since it is not something I have a lot of experience in myself, I found myself googling quite a lot, but I also felt that it increased my immersion in the story and made the world feel incredibly rich. While some aspects of the story are a bit cliche (getting stuck together due to external circumstances, discovering they have the exact same music taste, the desparate motorcycle chase at the end - however, this is a romance after all and romance lives from cliche and with this book this felt like a movie drama in the best way), it was clearly written with love and care and worked well for me. Billu was a really interesting character, caring and very polite, but also someone that needed (and deserved) to be persued and shown that she is worthy of love and care. I would have liked to get to know a bit more about her, especially her own experiences and feelings outside of the relationship, but I still found myself caring a lot for her. I also really liked the friendgroup and the exploration of relationships between them. And furthermore I absolutely adored the dance scenes, the bonding through music and the realization how actual attraction is supposed to make you feel.

This is a quite short novella and while I was able to suspend my disbelief for the quick progression of the romance due to the external circumstances forcing deeper connection (as well as isolating the main character), I would have loved some more moments of them exploring the city and discovering their feelings for each other as I feel it would have increased my enjoyment of their relationship. I always enjoyed these scenes a lot and I mainly just wish there had been more of them, they were so cute! As I already mentioned I would also love to learn more about Billu. The end itself felt rather abrupt (especially after the very long motorcycle chase, which was cool, but a bit too long for the lenght of the novella and especially compared to the rather sudden end) and I think a longer epilogue would have increased my enjoyment of the story further. Despite this, I really enjoyed this story!

All in all this is a lovely ownvoices story by a Desi trans lesbian about deciding against an arranged marriage, recovering from getting one's heart broken, rebelling against cultural and familial norms and finding love and I am very happy I read it!