Multi-Cultural

Happy Monday all!

Excited to share with you today my review for this book that I think should not be missed! I just really loved everything about this and can’t recommend it enough!💕💕

My Thoughts

beautifully told this story was bursting with culture, family dynamics, and love!

Balli Kuar Jaswal completely captivated me with this engaging story about these three dynamic sisters. I felt as though I was wisked away to India along with the Shergill Sisters. Jaswal’s writing is so descriptive, she made the characters and the setting pop off the pages. Seriously when I was done with this book I felt as though I knew these characters and had been on this pilgrimage with them. Some books you read, some books you experience, this book was the latter.

Sisters Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina are not terribly close, in fact they don’t necessarily like one another. BUT it is their mother’s dying wish that they take a pilgrimage to India together. The sisters are all hesitant, they each have things going on in their own lives, but how can they deny their mother her dying wish? What transpires is a remarkable journey of self discovery, sisterly bonding, and forgiveness. These sisters started off this journey as complete strangers and ended it with an unbreakable bond. The book really brought home the fact that in order for people to truly understand you, you need to let them see who you truly are.

This book really took me on an emotional journey I laughed, I cried, I got angry, I got frustrated. I found the sister so real and so relatable, I could see a little piece of me in each of them. The cultural aspects of this book were so interesting. The clash between traditional and modern viewpoints appears tricky to navigate. India seems to be a country rich in culture and I’d imagine this would be both rewarding and difficult for people of Indian dissent living outside the country. Simply put this was a beautiful story about remarkable women that should not be missed!

🎧🎧🎧 this was such an engaging and enriching audio experience!Soneela Nankani and Deepti Gupta really brought these characters to life. I think they especially gave a voice to the mother that really added an extra layer to the story. Not to mention they could pronounce all the names and locations that I would have struggled with.

*** thank you so much to William Morrow and Harper Audio for my copy of this book ***

About the Book

The author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows follows her acclaimed America debut with this life-affirming, witty family drama – an Indian This Is Where I Leave You – about three Punjabi sisters embarking on a pilgrimage to their homeland to lay their mother to rest.
The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia were never close and barely got along growing up and now have grown even further apart as adults. Rajni, a school principal, is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a 30-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking “good” sister, married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life.
On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she’s always been a dutiful daughter and cannot, even now, refuse her mother’s request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina’s in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time.
Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives – and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their mother long ago – a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.