Publication Date: July 11, 2023
After a shocking phone call from her mother, Reeva Mehta’s life starts to sound like the plot of a Bollywood drama. From the outlandishly funny author of 30 Things I Love About Myself comes a hilarious, heartwarming novel about love, family, and new beginnings.
Thirty-four-year-old Reeva thought her life couldn’t possibly get more complicated, until her semi-famous Bollywood mother calls to tell her that she’s been lying to her daughters for decades—the father they thought died thirty years ago has been alive this whole time. Only now he actually is dead. Worse? His dying wish was for Reeva and her sisters Sita and Jaya to attend his funeral prayers—which means spending a fortnight together at his house, surrounded by relatives they never knew existed.
Reeva already has more than enough going on in her life. She’s an overworked London lawyer, her hair is falling out due to stress-induced alopecia, she can’t decide if her new boyfriend, Nick, is really as wonderful as he appears to be, and her brand-new cat is playing hard to get (even for a cat). And now she has to spend two weeks with the sisters she hasn’t spoken to since Jaya stole her boyfriend and Sita took her side.
But as Reeva slowly learns more about their father and his life—with the help of his sister, aka her new, wise Satya Auntie—she starts to uncover the complicated truth of their past…and realizes she needs Jaya and Sita more than she ever could have imagined.
For any woman who has ever wished away pesky relatives, Reeva Mehta deserves a trophy for her suffering at the hands of a dysfunctional family.
Author Radhika Sanghani delivers a side-splitting comedy alongside an introspective examination of personalities in I Wish We Weren’t Related.
Estranged from her two younger sisters, Reeva has a successful law career and a new boyfriend. Her mother, a well-known Bollywood actress, flits in and out of her life. However, Reeva’s carefully constructed life comes crashing down when she learns that her father (the one she thought died when she was a child) has just died and left an inheritance to his three daughters with the condition they attend his funeral and perform the Hindu prayers for him.
What ensues is an opportunity for readers to get a front-row seat to Reeva’s meltdown of epic proportions. Not only does she have to face her sisters, but she has to deal with a personal sense of inadequacy. On the surface, there are plenty of laughs, but the humor provides clues to Reeva’s internal angst.
Reeva and her sisters must find a way to co-exist during the two-week Hindu ceremony. Reeva tries to put the pieces of the past together and comes up with a shocking theory.
I Wish We Weren’t Related provides an entertaining beach read that will have readers checking their own hair as Reeva navigates the complicated world of family relationships.
Radhika Sanghani is an award-winning journalist and author based in London. She writes features for publications like the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and Grazia. She is the author of Virgin, Not That Easy, and 30 Things I Love About Myself. Radhika is also a body positive campaigner, and founded the #SideProfileSelfie movement to celebrate big noses.
