Do you love bad romance movies but think that they’re just too short? Would you like the disaster to last 5 hours instead of 1 and a half? Then, boy, do I have a book for you.

There are two things that were fine about this book: the message that you are Indian no matter whether you choose to participate in traditions or not and the dressing room scenario (only as a concept for a scene and not the actual scene due to issue number 1 below).

There are many things I didn’t like about this book.

First of all, let’s start with some of the lesser evils of this book.

It’s just not well written. It reads like it has never seen an editor and that doesn’t make for a great experience.

Manny, as a main character, is rather inconsistent and, due to her wealth, pretty far removed from the average, non-rich reader. She seems completely blind to how Adam is very much a bad person despite it being emphasized how she’s a strong and empowered woman, over and over and over again. Manny even refuses to believe Sammy when he tells her about how traditional his family is.

Second of all, the romance between Sammy and Manny just doesn’t have any chemistry. It borders on insta-love and the ending does not make sense. Sammy reads like a Hallmark love interest getting the business woman to rediscover life outside business, which is essentially what he is. He’s pretty much just Manny’s guide to Indian culture until he suddenly isn’t.

Now, onto the middle ground evil which is: Manny’s company as a concept. It’s a company that enables you to break up with your partner through email, which a) is honestly callous and a rather cruel way to break up with someone and b) means that she’s made a business of profiting off of people’s vulnerability. And it’s never genuinely challenged. It could have made for an interesting character trait in another book.

There are somethings about this book that are even more uncomfortable and, frankly, sickening.

At every turn in the story, Manny makes a point of emphasizing how different and odd and alien Indian culture is to her. The book leans into stereotypes. White characters make rather insensitive jokes and are let off the hook for it. Adam who behaves despicably, ends up being let off the hook without a confrontation. It is not my place to talk about this, so please read Aashna’s review to fully understand.

The LGBTQ representation in this book is borderline offensive. There are multiple gay men in this story and every single one of them is written the exact same way and relegated to the exact same role: the Hypersexual Gay Best Friend. There is no depth to any them. Every other line they say is either something about how gay they are or something sexual. It was honestly pretty sickening to read. Representation has gotten much better in the last decade and this reads as an outdated and horrible stereotype.

Next, the only non-skinny character in this book is written to be comedic relief in the same way early 2000s TV wrote non-skinny characters as comedic relief. Characters are just allowed to make remarks about her body weight and, while the main character worries about her carb intake (perpetrating diet culture) the non-skinny girl is showing eating lots of bread and butter. Again, upsetting and I thought we, collectively, were better than this by now.