Summary
Ayesha Shetty lost her brother seven years ago, the same time she lost everything else important to her: her dreams, her fierce independence, and the man she loved. Not wanting to see her mother hurt anymore, she put her wild self away and became the dutiful daughter her mother needed and took on her brother’s role in the family business.
Now her best friend’s big, fat Indian wedding is a chance to get away from her endless duties at the restaurant and maybe even have some fun (if she remembers how). But a setup arranged by her mother, with a doctor no less, is the last thing she needs. The fact that he checks all her mother’s boxes just makes everything better…and worse.
Then Emmitt Hughes shows up. Her brother’s best friend. The love she once chose over family duties and her responsibilities. The one she asked to leave, and who did. The one who knows the real Ayesha. Torn between a love from the past that could cost her the only person she has left and her sense of obligation to her mother, will Ayesha find the strength to stop thinking about what everyone else wants and finally put herself first? Or is the old Ayesha truly gone for good?
Author Biography
USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories
that explore universal issues. Her novels have been named best books of the
year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews. She has won numerous
accolades, including the American Library Association’s award for best romance,
the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for best contemporary romance, and multiple RT
Seals of Excellence; has been a RITA finalist; and has been listed for the
Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls her “not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance
novelists working today.” She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two
visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.
Buy Link: https://amzn.to/3pWDqM8
Social Media Links
Website: https://sonalidev.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SonaliDev.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sonali_Dev
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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7025918.Sonali_Dev
Interview with Author Solini Dev
The Wedding
Setup may be a short story, but it is tremendously powerful. How would
you describe it to readers?
Thank you. It’s the story of
a girl who used to be a rebel who followed her heart and fought for what she wanted,
and then her brother’s death leaves her responsible for her widowed mother.
It’s about being knocked off your feet and getting stuck, and learning how to
stand back up and reclaim yourself.
The story invites us to take
an intimate look into a mother-daughter relationship. This is a universal
theme, however, you also steep the plot in your own Indian heritage. Can you
tell readers what this story means to you as a daughter? What it means to you
as an Indian woman?
There is so much of my own
relationship with my mother in this book. We’ve always been incredibly close.
She’s outspoken and confident and she modeled some powerful behaviors for me
growing up about owning her own body and her voice. But there were the other
parts where she was a product of her time and culture, believing in absolute
terms that it is a woman’s duty to nurture her family, to marry ‘at the right
time,’ to be a certain kind of mother. These are things she pushed hard. Things
I internalized but also fought to do on my own terms and not hers. Ayesha’s
relationship with her mother used to be this way, and then a tragedy changes
their dynamic. So, it’s an exploration of how battles for identity get derailed
by tragedy and grief and what it takes to heal.
Ayesha’s mom describes her
as obedient, responsible, and “always putting everyone else before her own
needs.” After hearing this Ayesha (internally) feels hypothermic. Can you
explain how these seemingly sweet compliments completely destroy your heroine?
The mother-child bond comes
with a kind of intuitive understanding of each other that’s unique to that
relationship. So, while Ayesha has lost her fiery spirit and both she and her
mother have lost years to their grief and struggle to survive, her mother knows
who her daughter is deep down and how much she’s buried. So there’s a very
nuanced intent to these ‘compliments’ and they hit the nerve they’re meant to
hit. Ayesha’s reaction to these words is her dead parts coming back to life.
It only takes a moment—one
second—for Ayesha to break free from her ice…a single word from Emmitt has her
coming back to life. Why does she have such a powerful reaction to someone she
hasn’t seen in seven years?
Ayesha had a crush on Emmitt
for many years before they got together. She’s always had a strong reaction to
him. The years they spent together as young adults were years when she came
into herself, and felt seen and cherished. Then she loses all of that when her
brother dies and they break up. So, it’s a combination of things that come
together when Ayesha meets Emmitt again. They have a natural connection, but
also, with his return come all the memories of who she used to be and how much
she used to let herself feel.
Ayesha has never forgotten
how Emmitt turns “her messy, impulsive, unfettered emotion into something
beautiful.” But she has forgotten the effect that she has on him. What buried
memories are uncovered as she watches Emmitt react to their reunion?
Emmitt has always dealt with
the world and the pain it causes him by keeping everyone at arm’s length. But
Ayesha destroys his defenses with her ability to love (and do everything else)
so fiercely. So, when he loses her he’s already lost his ability to protect
himself. Their joint grief is what separated them, so, while they understand
each other’s pain they both also understand the loneliness of not having each
other to lean on. They’ve had to make the journey to healing individually, but
meeting each other again brings up the piece that needs the other to heal.
How did you get to know your
couple? How were you able to understand what was needed to heal their broken
hearts?
The one theme that threads
through all my books is finding yourself on the tightrope between personal
freedom and responsibility to family and community. Healing is always about
finding or rediscovering your love for yourself. So, I understand my characters
through that lens: how have they lost themselves? What about themselves do they
need to reclaim and fall in love with? A truly connected couple is one who aids
this journey in each other, recognizes it, and supports it.
In a limited number of pages
you not only give readers a living, breathing couple, but also an avalanche of
equally interesting characters like Ayesha’s best friend, suitor, aunties…and
you even create depth with characters that are no longer living. Why was it so
important to spend time with these secondary characters? What do they reveal
about your hero and heroine?
I believe that as humans we
are a sum total of our relationships and the world we live in and build for
ourselves. How someone treats other people and how they respond to how they are
treated is what constitutes character.
At its heart, every story is
about a person who is somehow at odds with the world they live in or with
themselves because of the expectations of their world, and the journey they
make to resolve that conflict. Ayesha wouldn’t be Ayesha without her mother and
Bela, her best friend and the community she was raised in. Bela has been her
wild other half growing up, then their paths diverged, but they continued to be
each other’s support. Her mother has become a crutch she uses to hold on to her
grief. Emmitt’s grief over his friend has run his life for seven years too. So
the secondary characters are just as integral to the story as the protagonists.
While the plot focuses on
grief, there is also great joy to be found. After all, the backdrop of the
story is a giant wedding. What do you personally find the most fun at a
traditional Indian wedding celebration?
I’m always only there for
the food and dancing! Fine, and getting to dress up. And the wine. Also, maybe
the chance to hang out with family and friends I only see at weddings. And the
drunk aunties and uncles.
After readers devour The Wedding Setup, which of your other
books would you recommend they read next?
First, thank you so much for
devouring The Wedding Setup! I’m incredibly proud of
my Raje series, a set of retellings of my four favorite Jane Austen novels set
in a politically ambitious Indian American family from Northern California. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors is a gender flipped Pride and Prejudice. Recipe for Persuasion is a two-generational
homage to Persuasion set on a Food Network
show. Incense and Sensibility, the love story between a gubernatorial candidate and a yoga
therapist who can save him but also destroy his campaign, pays tribute to Sense and Sensibility. And the upcoming The Emma Project (May 17th 2022), which is a gender
flipped Emma that explores what it
means when a person with tremendous privilege offers charity to someone who has
much less.
The Wedding Setup Excerpt
Goose bumps rose across
Ayesha’s skin, one sharp dot at a time.
“Ayesha.”
That was it. Just that one
word. Her name. In a voice that was its own ghost.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
One tight squeeze. Tight enough to hurt, tight enough to almost dislodge the
false eyelashes Andre had pressed into her lash line one by one with the
precision of a surgeon. Then boom! she was in control again and back to Ayesha on Ice.
Eyes blank, face set, she
turned toward the voice.
Emmitt.
The impact of him was a body
blow.
The entire universe stilled.
Words weren’t a thing. Or sound. Breath? What was that?
Ayesha! Get a grip.
No grip. That’s how it had
always been. She’d had no grip when it came to Emmitt Hughes. Not even a little
bit. Not when she’d spied on him and Ajay playing Mario Kart and Minecraft and GTA for hours, for years. Not when she’d yearned and dreamed
and spun stories with him at the center.
I’ve made my love for you,
my god.
It was the cheesiest of
lines from one of those Bollywood songs her parents had played on repeat at the
restaurant. Amma had loved translating the over-the-top lyrics and explaining
their nuances.
Back when Amma was full of
stories and songs and laughter. Before Ajay.
Ajay.
Her brother’s unspoken name
fell between them like a glass bauble and shattered.
“You remember Emmitt,”
Edward had the gall to say.
Bela shot him a glare.
You didn’t tell me he would
be here. Ayesha threw the silent accusation at her traitorous best friend,
who gave her nothing more than another worried look.
No, Eddie. Remind me again
who he is? The snarky words stuck in
Ayesha’s throat. Old Ayesha would have said them. Old Ayesha said everything.
“Emmitt,” New Ayesha said,
every feeling buried under her customer-is-king voice from the restaurant.
“Nice to see you again.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in
the long column of his throat. How was he still so darned beautiful?
One swallow, and then he
smiled back. Banking feelings where no one saw them had been his thing. Emmitt
the Wall. That’s what Ajay had called him. Her brother had been best friends
with him since Emmitt had moved to Naperville in fifth grade after his parents’
divorce. Years of friendship, and he’d still held Ajay at that slight distance
he’d been so good at. Something she would always wish she hadn’t cured him of.
You broke me, Ayesha.You
broke every defense I’ve ever had against the world.
She, Ayesha Shetty—too tall,
too dark, too outspoken, too intense, too ambitious, too everything for
everyone else had been just enough to break through Emmitt the Wall.
“It’s nice to see you too,”
he said gently, sounding . . . she dug through her brain to come up with the
right word. Grown-up? Contained?
Good. Because Ayesha was all
those things now too. Not a grenade with its fuse pulled, ready to blow up the
world.
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