Nope. I do not support this book at all.

This book is set in India during a time when it was occupied with force by white people. Being an Indian, I know the struggles and the trauma and the absurd rules which were imposed on our past generations. Our history books were filled with topics centered on The British Raj!
I refuse to read a book that just uses the setting and the background (for no apparent reason whatsoever) to set up a romance about 2 white individuals.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

This is a beautiful story about love, loss, family and friendship during WWI. India is the perfect backdrop for Maddy and Luke's love story and my heart broke as they got torn apart. Their story is one I won't soon forget.

Rather than give a bad review, I would just say that this book is not well written and the subject is not explored well.

Not a favorite, I had high hopes but this book is taking a dark time in history and romanticizing it in a way that is simply not acceptable. While it is a nice romance novel it's also very culturally inappropriate.

i went into this book, thinking at least one of the main characters would be Indian but both characters are white colonizers, this book is clearly glorifying the British's invasion of India. Ashcroft uses the term "Hindis" to describe Indians, which is extremely incorrect Hindu is a language and Hindi is a religion.

stop romancing colonization, this book is written about a very traumatic time in India. please do not support authors like this.


A St. Martins Press ARC via NetGalley

Don’t let this pretty cover fool you, this book is problematic in so many ways. A romance novel written by a white author with the backdrop of the British Raj in India is not acceptable. India is not merely an exotic location convenient for a story of colonists falling in love to be told.

There were SO MANY inaccuracies throughout this novel. To correct a few in the first 30 pages:
- Hindis are not people. The language is called Hindi and the people who practice the religion Hinduism are called Hindus.
- Mosques are not where Jain monks pray, but are places of worship for Muslims. A Jain place of worship is called a Derasar.
- Many times this novel refers to the native language in Bombay as Urdu. Urdu is the language spoken in Pakistan. Marathi is spoken in Bombay (now Mumbai). While some individuals in the British Raj may have learnt Urdu, more than likely those in Bombay would not have.

This novel really needed to not be published, but in the least should have been fact-checked. Overall, this was an atrocious novel that emphasized colonialism and the white savior complex. I read this one so you don’t have to.

A huge thank you to Goodreads and St. Martin’s Press for the giveaway ARC win, and NetGalley for the e-book in exchange for my honest opinion!

I'm drawn to epic, historical romances and when I read the synopsis for Meet Me in Bombay, I was sure that was what I was going to get. The first half of the book certainly met that expectation. On New Year's Eve in Bombay, 1913, Madeleine (Maddy) Bright meets Luke Devereaux and it was connection at first sight. He helps her to find the beauty and joys of living Bombay, which helps to assuage her yearning for England and avoid her mother's blatant attempts to set her up with a much older man. Likewise, Luke falls for her kindness and passion for life. But as their relationship is falling into place, he is suddenly sent off to fight in World War I, which separates the two lovers and eventually puts a terrible obstacle between them.

It's during the second half of the book that I struggled. Given the World War I setting, their separation made sense and while it was disheartening to see how the war kept them apart, I understood it. But then the book took a turn that I found very disappointing and it highlighted the flatness of Maddy's character. She had a gut feeling that she should've listened to and fought for but instead caved in to the pressures and societal expectations around her. She very much felt like a two-dimensional character in a book, rather than a flesh and blood person with a heart and mind of her own. It was particularly frustrating to see at this point in the story when she was clearly blossoming early on. And the people around her who claimed to love her, like her mother and her friends? I genuinely believe they did her dirty (with little repercussions for their actions) and it just wasn't the story I personally wanted.

Do I recommend? I liked the book to a certain extent but I really went in expecting to fall in love with it and that just wasn't the case. If you want to check it out, I'd recommend borrowing it from the library.

I thought the blurb and the cover were very exciting. But more some reason I didn't click with the story and it's always a bad idea to push through a book you don't enjoy. Maybe it's a matter of wrong timing. I might need to pick it up at a later time and see how it goes.

Okay so I looked up some other reviews about this one and I have some issues. A lot of reviewers (not sure what background they came from) kept using the word ‘exotic’ to describe the setting, India, which made me cringe. Secondly they said they felt like they were in India and experiencing the country. Okay let’s clear that up. This book is set in a colonized India and we see how white people lived in India. We literally see nothing about actual India except for these gems: naked men in the river, men in the market being agressive sellers, men as servants in the house.

So I went into this book knowing what kind of India I would be experiencing...others chose not to do their homework. It’s a romance set in British colonized India between two British people that are only affected by European issues like WWI. It is not exotic and honestly it didn’t need to even be set in India, this could have easily been set in London.

I gave it 3 stars. I was interested in the romance and the time period (WWI is my favourite period to read about). I liked the dual timeline and the process of uncovering the mystery.

What I wasn’t into was the writing style. It was awkward and confusing for me to read. The dialogue seemed to just be interjected into a narrative story rather than a part of it. Sometimes it was in quotations, other times italics and it was also in parentheses. I was at times unsure if the words were spoken or just thoughts.

The whole drama with the mom I found unnecessary. I felt like there was nothing else the author could think of so she made this dramatic mystery that wasn’t actually dramatic.

Engaging at first, but then hard to finish. The writing was descriptive and the setting seemed beautiful.

This is such a charming Historical Fiction Romance set in Bombay. The book reads like a classic novel which I enjoyed. It also alternates between Maddy and Luke's perspectives as well as jumps back and forth between time periods. I loved the relationship between Maddy and Luke. They were a perfect fit. The plot of the story was heartwrenching as you read about what happened to Luke in the war and how Maddy was dealing with the unknown. I was so lost in the words and what was happening that I couldn't put the book down! I had to know how the story ended. I would highly recommend this book to readers of historical fiction or classic style writing!
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book was a little slow to start for me but once it did… hold my baby and clear the calendar. I was suddenly and violently sucked into this book and it was so nice because I’ve had a difficult time getting really into books since the new year (March now).

Most of the book takes place in Bombay in 1914 and 1915. I haven’t read a book set in India in a long, long time and I don’t think I’ve ever read one I’ve liked as much as this one. It has a great sense of place; I love a book with a vibrant setting and this one made me wonder what it would be like to visit.

The most wonderful part of this book is watching Madeline and Luke fall in love. We are given such wonderful details that you can’t help but fall right in love with them. I fell so in love that I had to frantic-read for much of the book because I HAD to know what happened. I am absolutely smitten with this book and look forward to checking out more from this author.

I was given a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy of Meet Me in Bombay.

The description drew me into this book since it is a more unique premise. It was a little more of a romance than a historical fiction for me.

Meet Me in Bombay is a lovely, and often gut-wrenching historical romance about two lovers torn apart by WWI. Set in Bombay and the terrible trenches on the front, this story held my attention throughout. I loved it.

Meet Me in Bombay was a historical fiction love story, set in WWI in Bombay. A compelling circumstance of this deeply connected English couple torn apart by war. The story had a nice mystery element to it, as to whether the couple will re-unite. The characters fell slightly flat for me, yet this was a beautiful story. Thank you NetGalley for the copy for review. All opinions are my own.

I really liked this book, in part because it took place in a location I know very little about. I loved reading about India in this time period. The characters were very engaging and I would absolutely recommend this book to my friends.

I didn't know much about this novel when I requested it, and it was probably my bad. As a History and English teacher I try to be selective in what I read and review so I can gain new perspectives and help guide students to new literature. While I may not adopt most books I read on Net Galley, I recommend some for independent reading. Most of the time I don't adopt them for classroom use ONLY because of things like sexual content and language or even appropriateness. Keep in mind I teach 12th graders so I can push the envelope a lot more...

That being said, in college my History concentration was in British Medieval History. Some of my courses tended to focus on modern Britain and their colonization journey, depicting their epic domination over the map in the 1800s/early 1900s. Colonization is brutal, evil, ugly, and horrific. This book....oi...this book.

I didn't know you could romanticize colonialization until I read this book. At least Joseph Conrad had the audacity to write graphic descriptions of colonization in Africa into his racist tripe, but this....made it seem not only necessary, but cute and pretty.

I feel like Kristin Hannah started this women's centered, women-lite WWII lit genre and female authors have been expanding upon it for the past 5-6 years. This one takes place in WWI, but really what is new about this one that you can't get with another World War set, female driven, novel? Well....minus racism against Indians, not much. It's what you expect and I can appreciate the novel for that. You get what you pay for.

So, in summation, in my feedback to NetGalley, the Publisher, and Author.....while I appreciate the work that goes into writing a novel, and the anxieties that exist with critique, please keep in mind sensitivities when setting a novel or constructing one in a certain environment. For me, I responsibly can not recommend this novel to students.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ebook version of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This is a romance novel set partly in the UK and partly India around the time of the 1st World War. The author writes beautifully and her sense of place is amazing, flitting as it does at the beginning between the sultry heat and privilege of colonial India and a hospital for recuperating soldiers. I was interested to read about the characters and felt drawn into the story, until about mid-way through. At this point the author falls back on the terrible old trope of people not getting together by just missing each other and other people not telling them the truth. This is the part that the whole second half hinges on, and I felt extremely let down by the lazy usage of this. I did read to the end, getting increasingly annoyed by the number of times that… ooops… if only someone had been slower/able to speak/not blinded by their own motives etc., etc. cropped up. I know that this may be a particular foible of mine when it comes to stories, so I do recommend this work to many people – lovers of historical fiction, or of historical romances; people who enjoy good writing and storytelling; and people who don’t suffer from my prejudice! For those of you who feel the same as me, caveat emptor. Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.

This was such a beautiful yet heartbreaking love story that takes place in the 1900s in India during World War I.

I loved the dual POVs as Maddy, a young woman in love, and Luke, a young officer that has no memory of who he is.

The characters are written with such depth and heart, and the writing took me away to another place in time.

*thank you St Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the gifted copy.

Love divided by war. A love new ,a sense of duty, a young woman far from home. These are the elements that cement this war torn epic. It has the heat of desire in two young people in a country not their own,who manage in a short time to create a world of their own. Tripped by circumstances into roles they could not imagine theirs is a love truly for the ages. The prose is lyrical and deep with the fear of its time. Happy reading.