to top

Book Review-My Best Friend’s Son’s wedding by Zarreen Khan

We all have been missing the wedding season for too long now and if you are a reader with imagination then grab a copy and enjoy being part of the grand wedding (s)

Zarreen is a gifted writer. She writes humor with so much ease and no sleaze. She makes her characters so real and relatable and as a reader, you can’t help but associate them with at least one person in your friend circle.

This is a great read for those who like romantic comedies as a genre in novels. This is a story of Minty Sood and her friend Kriti Vasani who represent the elite Delhi women. Minty is the widowed daughter in law of the super-rich Sood household and Kittu is her best friend.  The story also has a subplot between the mother and the son. Minty’s son Parth decides to get married to his girlfriend from college and this is just at the same when Minty is proposed by the dashing Puneet Bhalla (another super-rich dude). The story unfolds many characters and situation which make you not just chuckle but laugh out loud while reading. The book is being converted to a web series… I could visualise every single detail written in the book, even the false manicured nails which the protagonist keeps biting.

What to expect– We all have been living in a nameless despondency in this pandemic and this book is like a whiff of fresh air. It brings laughter, happiness, the awww moments, and all that makes it a rom-com read. It is also a satire on the women who are rich, successful but not empowered. The narrative has many characters, many subplots but they are strung together beautifully. It is a story of one of those unusual modern families where mother and son are getting married around the same time. It is about women who don’t think forty is the new thirty.. it is about women who can also be naughty at forty even with their grown-up kids, daunting mother-in-laws and forever eating husbands.

What I liked– I liked the flow of the book, it is easy on the reader as the story doesn’t go too much to and fro. One of my favorite characters was Soni didi, her description as “fizzy haired Rekha from  the movie khoon bhari maang, wearing a purple salwar kameez” hasn’t left my mind. There were actually women like that in the 90s.  The author made me believe that a forty-two-year-old can also be attractive enough for men half her age hitting on her. I liked the sensitivity of the story. A child knowing about their parent’s love interest or a mother forever trying to look her age so that people take her seriously or in-laws adopting their daughter in law as their own. Some of these things can be so dramatic but Zarreen has written about breaking stereotypes in a funny yet sensitive manner.

What could be better– I breezed through the first hundred pages. The story gets predictive in the middle though it picks up pace in the last fifty pages. Some things in the book were difficult to be imagined as anything close to reality. Like Miss Muffet, the reference to the 90s where women were chatting with strangers on dial-up connections, the too good to be true daughter in law and mother in law of Minty Sood!

Recommended for– I recommend it to women who think that the flame of their youth is having its last flickering moments in the 40s! To everyone who wants a good laugh in times of Pandemic.

Leave a Comment