I don't really know what I expected going into Bombay Monsoon, but I was unfortunately disappointed. As someone living in Pakistan, I have strong ties to India and I found the depiction of my neighboring country flawed at best and problematic at worst.

The book revolves around our main character, Dan, a reporter for UNI working in Bombay during the state of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. During the first half, I found Dan to be an interesting character, in fact it was nice to see him standing up for India when the brash Russell put it down, but after a certain amount of time there is a subtle shift in Dan for the worst. He is resentful when his boss says they will be working on the 4th of July and will have a holiday on the 15th of August instead. Dan insinuates that the US is better than India because they have perfected the art of democracy despite being an older nation, and his tone is condescending, which left a bad taste in the reader's mouth. Furthermore, there are little jabs as to how backward Indian society is with regards to how women, servants, and others are treated and I found myself feeling offended at times on behalf of the Indian people.

The plot of the story was interesting at first, but as Dan got increasingly worse so did the book and unfortunately I ended up disliking it. 

*I received an ARC via NetGalley*