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Balli Kaur Jaswal

Författare till Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

7+ verk 1,852 medlemmar 119 recensioner 1 favoritmärkta

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Verk av Balli Kaur Jaswal

Associerade verk

One World Two: A Second Global Anthology of Short Stories (2016) — Bidragsgivare — 18 exemplar
The Best Australian Stories 2015 (2015) — Bidragsgivare — 16 exemplar

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Amusing and enjoyable overall. The plot and pacing are good but the characterizations are flat; the audiobook narrator does a great job of creating different voices which helps with that deficit.
 
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fionaanne | 89 andra recensioner | Mar 5, 2024 |
I received an ARE of this from a Goodreads Giveaway - thanks!

Would I recommend this: yes!!!
For fans of travel, learning new cultures, exploring family dynamics, and wonderfully written and developed characters. Left me fist pumping and cheering along with them!

OHMYGOD, I loved this! I was so excited to read it, and it was one of those books where within 20 pages you know you were right and you WILL love this book. I love learning about places and cultures through reading, even novels, and this was a new one for me: Sikhism and India. I enjoyed learning about the little bits they mentioned in the book, but as a story it was so strong as well!

The characters are the absolute best. It can be hard to develop strong characters when you have several all taking turns narrating, but they each provided insight into themselves as well as each other when they took their turn in the story. Even the mother, who is dead basically the whole time, feels like a familiar friend by the middle of it. One whose quirks and flaws and passions I know and love.

One great aspect of this novel is the lack of a romance line. It's very firmly based on the sisters and them learning about themselves as individuals as well as a group. The secrets that each sister has throughout their pilgrimage through India are hinted at and built upon, but not in that way where it feels so blunt and tactless; none of those single sentences at the end of chapter just saying "She thought she would be ok... until she remembered what he had said before she left." or some rubbish like that. My god, that gets annoying, right? These were gracefully and naturally woven in, which is key in any story for me.

Is it predictable? In some ways, yes. I had a feeling they would all find their happy endings, reconcile, and all that. But the method of each resolution was hazy enough to keep an air of mystery for me, and I loved it for that. I knew the what, but not the how, and isn't the journey all the fun of it anyway?
… (mer)
 
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Jenniferforjoy | 17 andra recensioner | Jan 29, 2024 |
Enjoyed reading about the Punjabi culture and the widows at the community center class (I’m a real sucker for any kind of story involving an evening class with quirky characters) but the plot line of the erotic stories was pretty over the top. I also found the window’s stories distracting from the main part of the novel - I know it sounds ridiculous to say this when the title has “erotic stories” right at the start, but I wasn’t actually expecting it to be filled with erotic stories! LOL



… (mer)
 
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hmonkeyreads | 89 andra recensioner | Jan 25, 2024 |
audio fiction (11+ hours), 3 Filipinx emigrant women working as domestic maids in Singapore try to prove another maid's innocence after she is framed for her ma'am's murder. (written by Singapore native who learned about the story of a Filipinx woman executed for the murder of a child, and who wanted to present a story from the perspective of Filipinx migrant workers, sort of like a Singaporean version of The Help.)

I enjoyed the setting -- Singapore has sea otters! monitor lizards! a botanical garden with turtles!... but also some problems with marginalizing migrant workers--on a strictly-controlled island where COVID would otherwise have been a non-issue, an outbreak occurred because the government neglected to protect/immunize the migrant population, and the attitudes and actions of some characters towards the workers (especially when you consider the vulnerability of undocumented people in the US) is totally believable.
The cast of characters were also fun and interesting to get to know--Angel, getting over a bad breakup with her ex-girlfriend; Donita, pursuing a relationship with a Sikh migrant worker but also struggling under a cruelly oppressive ma'am; and Cora, desperate to stay away from the Philippines and the corrupt government there that pursues her.

The audio narration was also great, and I became so engrossed in the storytelling it was hard to pause the book when I got close to the end. Yes, the story may have gotten a bit farfetched, but not that much more than any novel that revolves around an unsolved murder.
… (mer)
½
 
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reader1009 | 6 andra recensioner | Jan 10, 2024 |

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Statistik

Verk
7
Även av
3
Medlemmar
1,852
Popularitet
#13,892
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
119
ISBN
70
Språk
7
Favoritmärkt
1

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