The set-up here is pretty compelling--Tina, a non-resident Indian, travels to India with her family for an elaborate, multi-day wedding. Diksha Basu tries hard to create a "Crazy Rich Asians" plotline with similar vibes, but it fell flat for me because I found Tina to be dull and unlikable. I was much more invested in the other characters, particularly her parents (Radha and Neel), and found myself sighing when the book went back to focusing on Tina.

I also appreciated Diksha Basu's dry sense of humor--this especially comes through when she inserts little vignettes of the minor characters, which is one of my favorite plot devices.

Destination Wedding begins with a flight from the U.S. to India for Tina Das, her friend Marianne, Tina's mother (with her boyfriend), and Tina's father. Upon arrival, everyone spends their days going in different directions, meeting up occasionally over several days for different parts of a very posh wedding ceremony. You see peaks of drama, fun, and self-discovery as the days pass.

If you engaged Diksha's previous book (The Windfall), and like fictional family adventures and drama, this is a great summer read. It has some similar dimensions to Crazy Rich Asians in terms of privileged lifestyles and challenging relationships, and sheds some light also on the contrast in India. I also enjoyed seeing the relationship between Tina's parents, Neel and Radha, and how their romantic lives changed over time.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Ballentine Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
#DestinationWedding #NetGalley #travelfiction #weddingfiction #familydramedy

As Tina travels to India for her cousin's wedding she is still trying to find where she fits into the world. An Indian-American who doesn't feel like she fits in America or India this book follows Tina and her separated parents on a trip that will certainly change their lives. I enjoyed how the wedding events came to life through the descriptions and the cast of characters were all special in their own way.

I finished Destination Wedding and it was so much fun! It’s about an Indian-American family that goes to India for a huge family wedding. There are so many funny anecdotes and the characters were so quirky and fun. The dad who was always trying to optimize his Fitbit steps was without actually walking was my favorite. This reminded me a lot of Crazy Rich Asians with the humor and big family drama.

This was a fun, engaging read. Tina Das, who lives in New York, travels along with her best friend to attend an over the top wedding in Delhi.
It is somewhat of a coming of age story although she is 34, she just broke up with her boyfriend, isn’t overly excited about her job and doesn’t feel comfortable as to where she fits, India or America. Oh and her parents that are divorced both attend as well. Her mom is quite a character and has her new boyfriend along with her.
The lavish wedding and wealthy guests magnified the great divide between the rich and the poor of India. I liked that It included love stories between. the young and not so young.
I enjoyed the humor, the wedding shenanigans, adventures in Delhi and learning about Indian culture.

If you liked Crazy Rich Asians you will LOVE Destination Wedding. I honestly think I loved it more. It had all of the sparkle and lights and glamour with slightly less people to keep up with. There were some unexpected twists and turns that I wasn’t sure which way they would turn out and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this book!

I really loved this book!! It had so many twists and turns. It kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next!! This was my first book by this Author, and it won’t be the last!! Quick read!! Highly recommended!! You won’t be disappointed!!

I absolutely loved this book. The story was so original, the characters were loveable. I'm so glad I read this book, I flew through it in a day!

This was a fun read! I enjoyed getting to know the characters and I also enjoyed the insight that I was provided to Indian culture.

First of all I loved the back drop of this book being in India.

I feel like this was the first book that I've read based in India and I really did enjoy it. This author did a great job at showing the development of relationships between all of the people in this book. It did jump around sometimes if a character thought about someone it would just to that person's perspective leaving me confused sometimes. Overall though it was written beautifully. We follow a divorced couple their daughter and her best friend all traveling to India to attend a family wedding. Like at most weddings people reflect and make major decisions in order to better themselves and make themselves happy.

I had really been looking forward to this one, but I'm struggling with it. The storyline sort of moves all over the place, but there isn't much happening.

Tina Das, Born in America, but family is from India, heads back to India with her best friend, Her divorced mom and Dad, as well as her mom's boyfriend to attend a wedding of one of her cousins back home. While there, her friend tries to find herself ( or that's how it appeared to me) and her dad meets a woman he was set up with from an online dating site. Tina meets Sid, an out of work actor that she met previously and they go on a couple of dates.

My main issue with this story is the multiple plots and points of view. Other than that, it was an interesting read.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Normally I find myself relating to the protagonist or her friends on most levels from the idea of growing up and not understanding which road to take to facing ones fears. However, as the two young women of the story went through the plot I found myself struggling to find a piece of relatability within them. I was more drawn to the parents’s dynamic within the story then anything else.
Overall this is a book that I wanted to like so badly that I had to go back and reread some parts. While I can’t say that I disliked the book, reading it involved forcing my eyes not to glaze over each time Marianne and Tina entered the scene.

Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu filters extravagance through the itinerary of a weeklong Indian wedding, following a blended Indian immigrant family and their friends journeying from New York to Delhi to celebrate one couple’s vows, and finding their own unexpected happy-ever-afters. Basu introduces a whole host of characters, each interesting in their own right, and formats the novel like a reality show to treat the reader to one revealing clip after another, connecting them through similarities and differences for segue and contrast. The chapter headings are descriptive sentences that seem to be revelatory but are also titillating because they hint at but never really give away what is to come. Take for instance the first chapter entitled, “JFK Airport: Their flight is delayed due to technical reasons and everyone is secretly wishing airlines didn’t announce that and make passengers nervous” which focuses on what the travelers are using as a vehicle for their separate anxieties as they embark on their trip, concerns that come to a head at the departure terminal but that aren't limited to nervousness about travel. The novel opens with the adult daughter lamenting that her mother is bringing a boyfriend to the wedding but that she is arriving without a date, meanwhile her father is concerned that his white replacement will look better in Indian clothes than he does and is therefore traveling in a turtleneck which gives him a headache because Esquire magazine says the shirt will give a dignified appearance.
I found the writing to be humorous but endearing because while Basu invites you to mock the stereotypical characters, she also shows you their insecurities and solicits your understanding and empathy. So she offers the stories of the Indian who succeeded in assimilating in the US but has no identity to pass on to his child and that of the child who mourns the loss of family and looks for meaning in their professional lives. By presenting the haves and the have-nots, both of whom struggle with the same basic issues, Basu offers a look past the characters' superficial fixations and into deeper, universal concerns.
Through a series of flash backs that could be as sudden as a character’s sharing a memory or a conversation about a long ago experience, we get glimpses into the characters’ motivations, feminist reversals by showing us women in power in various situations, even if it’s just an elderly woman resisting her son or a woman refusing the advances of a man.
While this book also ranked highly on my entertainment scale, Destination Wedding offered much more than just a light read and I found a lot to enjoy in the political but pleasurable prose.
Note: I received a free Netgalley download courtesy of Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much for allowing me to review this book.

Unfortunately, I was not able to finish this book (around 100 pages is where I stopped). I really wanted to love this book, because I love books about travel and self-discovery and non-white romantic leads, but this book just did not work for me.

Things I liked:
-The heavy dialogue. I know some people had some issues with this aspect of the book, but dialogue is usually my favorite parts of a book so this was something that I appreciated.
-The discussion of immigration and the complexities of understanding one's identity in America.
-The book was so full of Indian culture and unapologetically embraced it. Sometimes when there are genre books written by non-white authors that are sold to an American audience, they downplay their culture to make it more "digestible." So, I really appreciate Basu for not watering down her cultural.

Thing I didn't like:
-Some of the jokes about body image/weight and classism. They just felt a little unnecessary to me.
- None of the romantic pairings in this book seemed to have strong chemistry.
-I found Tina to be a little annoying, and her immaturity sometimes felt a little unbelievable to me.
-Lastly, and something that I have seen other people mention about this book is that there seems to be little editing for this book. From the poor sentence structures to the various plots that were haphazardly thrown together, it just made it difficult to continue reading.

I think this book will work for some people, especially those who are looking for a book that would serve as a good palate cleanser after reading something more dense. It just wasn't for me I don't think.

A journey into the life of a family as the return to India for a family wedding.

Tina Das doesn't belong anywhere. In America she is too Indian and in India she is to American. Not only doesn't she feel like she belongs in the world, she struggles to find a place in her family. Her divorced parents are both moving on with their love lives and Tina often feels extra. She says she is married to her career but even that feels like she's failing.

Over the course of a week we learn more about the India we don't often see in the movies. A family who immigrated to America and how they interact with the past.

A good pick for fans of The Namesake. This is more a character study than plot, but written so well you will continue to turn pages like it was a commercial read. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The cover really doesn't do the story justice and I could see readers passing over this believing it to be a romance.

This book sounded so promising!! I have been to Indian weddings in the United States, but never before in India, so I was excited to armchair travel my way there and experience this wedding!

Unfortunately, instead, I struggled to finish this one. The writing style relies on super-long sentences and constant head-hopping. These quick jumps in perspective to the point of view of the most minor of characters is so distracting. Plus, this is a real pet peeve of mine to encounter. I kept hoping that the perspective would settle down (it doesn't) and that the book would improve (it doesn't). This book really had the potential to be funny, entertaining and also educational about the culture, but it never really hits any of those marks. The characters are all so shallow that they are quite hard to like. No one really comes to life here and they are so wealthy that many comments are so tone-deaf aside from a few rather pointless nods in that direction.

But, more even than the shallow characters, the writing style really bothered me from start to finish, Frankly, the book feels like it needs a much stronger editorial presence to focus things a bit more. Plus, the plot is nothing more than a jumble of romantic entanglements - nothing really page turning. I wish that I had not forced myself to finish this one, honestly. I had really wanted to enjoy this more, which made this all the more disappointing in the quite predictable ending.

I struggled to get into this one. It took some work to keep up with all the POVs. There were some nice moments that I enjoyed. I was also in a mood most of the time when reading this. It makes me super picky which I hate.

I voluntarily read an early copy.

Author #Diksha Basu is the internationally bestselling author of#’The Windfall’. And now she has this witty and romantic novel #’Destination Wedding that is six stars.It has charm,belonging, and just will entertain you to no end.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Diksha Basu and #Ballantine Books

Although I am not your typical romance reader, I enjoy books that show me another culture, and Basu does this. On a trip from the US back to India for a wedding, Tina, raised in Ohio, is in limbo with her reality TV show and through her eyes the reader discovers the unique qualities of Indian culture and does it without stereotypes. Yes, it’s a romance, but it’s also about self-discovery and figuring out where you fit into a family.