Release Day & Giveaway: A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev
A
Bollywood Affair
By: Sonali Dev
By: Sonali Dev
Releasing
October 28th, 2014
Kensington
Blurb
Mili
Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was
promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a
freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has
even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight
months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly
what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim
her.
Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naĂŻve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. Open-hearted yet complex, she’s trying to reconcile her independence with cherished traditions. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.
Heartfelt, witty, and thoroughly engaging, Sonali Dev’s debut is both a vivid exploration of modern India and a deeply honest story of love, in all its diversity.
Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naĂŻve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. Open-hearted yet complex, she’s trying to reconcile her independence with cherished traditions. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.
Heartfelt, witty, and thoroughly engaging, Sonali Dev’s debut is both a vivid exploration of modern India and a deeply honest story of love, in all its diversity.
Advance
Praise for A Bollywood Affair:
“Sonali Dev is a fresh new voice in romance. A child bride who’s all grown up, a sexy Bollywood director, and deeply-felt emotions that will keep readers turning the pages. A Bollywood Affair has it all.” –Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times Bestseller
“Deeply romantic and emotional, with characters I fell in love with, A Bollywood Affair is simply unputdownable. It’s sexy, it’s dramatic, but most of all, it’s a sweet, hot love story that made me sigh and smile and want to read it all over again as soon as I turned the last page.” -Nalini Singh, New York Times Bestseller
“Sonali Dev is a fresh new voice in romance. A child bride who’s all grown up, a sexy Bollywood director, and deeply-felt emotions that will keep readers turning the pages. A Bollywood Affair has it all.” –Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times Bestseller
“Deeply romantic and emotional, with characters I fell in love with, A Bollywood Affair is simply unputdownable. It’s sexy, it’s dramatic, but most of all, it’s a sweet, hot love story that made me sigh and smile and want to read it all over again as soon as I turned the last page.” -Nalini Singh, New York Times Bestseller
Buy Links
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Excerpt
Mili
was in the middle of peeling the wrapper off her last remaining
chocolate bar when she heard the knock. She took a quick bite and put
the rest of it back in the empty fridge. Her stomach growled in
protest. She hadn’t eaten anything all day. There were some noodles
from Panda Kong in the fridge but she needed those for dinner.
Who
could be knocking on her door? No one, and she meant no one, had ever
knocked on that door in the four months that she had lived here.
Except that one time those Jesus Christ people had stopped by and
tried to give her a Bible. Another forceful knock. Too forceful. The
Bible people had been too polite to knock this hard. Something about
that knock made her defenses bristle.
It
couldn’t possibly be Ridhi’s brother, could it? Ridhi had said
they’d send him first.
Another
knock.
Oh
Lord. Oh Ganesha. Oh Krishna. What now?
Ridhi was gone only about half an hour. If Mili let anything slip
they would find Ridhi and Ravi before they got away. A complete
tragedy-style ending to their love story. Mili could never let that
happen. Never. Never.
She
tiptoed to the door.
“Hello?
Anybody there?” A deep, authoritative man’s voice shouted from
the other side. A deep, authoritative Indian man’s voice.
She looked through the fuzzy peephole. All she saw was a blurred
outline of a large figure. Oh. Lord. She tiptoed backward
and tripped over the shoes she’d left in the middle of the floor,
and landed on her bum with a thud, knocking over the lone chair that
stood in the middle of the room. Oh no, she had probably broken the
one piece of living room furniture she owned.
“Hello?”
the voice called again, sounding a little confused. He’d heard
her. Oh Lord. She hurried to the balcony. No way was she going
to be the reason for Ridhi taking on her
monosyllabic-slash-near-suicidal avatar again. She leaned over the
white spindle railing and saw her new bike on the bike rack just
below her. It wasn’t much of a jump. Just about seven feet to the
grassy mound below. She jumped.
She
landed on her feet and then toppled headlong into her bike, which in
turn crashed into the three other bikes next to it. Metal tore
through her shirt and jabbed her shoulder. The crash made her ears
ring. “Shh,” she hissed at the bike she was lying on and tried to
straighten up.
Samir
heard a loud crash. He ran to the open stairwell and leaned over the
railing. Some sort of crazy creature with the wildest mass of
jet-black curls was dusting herself off and trying to grab a
fluorescent yellow bike from a jumbled heap. Was she stealing it? In
her rush to pry it free she stumbled backward and her eyes met his.
Something in the way she looked at him set alarm bells gonging in his
head. His eyes swept from her panicked stance to the low-hanging
balcony. Had she jumped? Damn it.
“Hey!
Wait a minute. Are you Malvika?” he yelled at her.
Her
eyes widened to huge saucers, as if he’d accused her of something
truly heinous. Was she crazy? She had to be because before he knew
what to do next she yanked the bike free, hopped on it, and took off
as if he were some sort of gangster chasing her with a gun.
He ran
down the stairs, taking almost the entire flight in one leap, and saw
her desperately peddling away from him. The rickety piece of shit she
was riding wobbled and teetered, looking even more unstable than she
did. She turned around and gave him another terrified glance. What
was wrong with the woman? Just as she was about to turn away again
the bike’s handle jerked at the most awkward angle as if it had a
mind of its own and she went hurtling into a tree at the end of the
street.
“Holy
shit!” He ran to her.
By the
time he got to her she was lying on her back, her butt pushed up
against the tree trunk, her legs flipped over her head like some sort
of contortionist yoga guru and the bike intertwined with her folded
body. Through the tangle of hair, limbs, and fluorescent metal he
heard a sob and a squeak.
“Hello?
Are you all right?” Leaning over, he lifted a long spiral lock off
her face. It bounced against his palm, soft as silk.
One
huge, almond-shaped eye focused on him.
“Teh
thik to ho?” he repeated in Hindi. He had no idea why he’d spoken
it or why he had used that rural dialect he now used only with his
mother, but it just slipped out.
The
tangled-up, upside-down mess of a girl, looking at him from behind
her legs, literally brightened. There was just no other way to
describe it. Her one exposed eye lit up like a firework in a midnight
sky. He pushed more hair off her face, almost desperate to see the
rest of that smile.
“You
can speak Hindi,” she said, her surprisingly husky voice so filled
with delight that sensation sparkled across his skin.
For
one moment the almost physical force of her smile and the uninhibited
joy in her voice stole his ability to speak.
She
squinted those impossibly bright eyes at him. “Sorry, is that the
only line you know?”
“What?
No, of course not. I know lots of lines.” Wow, that must be the
stupidest thing he’d ever said in his life.
She
smiled again.
Trailer
Author
Info
Sonali
Dev’s first literary work was a play about mistaken identities
performed at her neighborhood Diwali extravaganza in Mumbai. She was
eight years old. Despite this early success, Sonali spent the next
few decades getting degrees in architecture and writing, migrating
across the globe, and starting a family while writing for magazines
and websites.
With
the advent of her first gray hair her mad love for telling stories
returned full force, and she now combines it with her insights into
Indian culture to conjure up stories that make a mad tangle with her
life as supermom, domestic goddess, and world traveler.
Sonali
lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused
husband and two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the
world’s most perfect dog.
Author
Links
Thank you for participating! ~Gaele (for Lisa)
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