Thank you to NetGalley for providing an Advanced Listening Copy in exchange for an honest review.

The story behind The Rules of Arrangement is compelling- Zoya's fight against the strictures of a still traditional Indian society is fascinating. However, there is quite a lot of fatphobia throughout the book. I do understand that we all have moments where we feel better or worse about ourselves, but it dominated the book. There are also clear instances of colourism and misogyny, and none of these are unpacked at all.

Interesting and enjoyable book. The narrator was good. Thank you netgalley for providing me with an arc of this book

I loved Zoya and her busy, loving, meddling family! Torn between her career, which she is totally rocking, and the traditions of her family and culture, which she loves and respects, Zoya struggles to navigate life’s next big steps.

Shazia Nicholls’s narration gives life to Zoya, her family, and the day-to-day feel in their home lives. He accent was beautiful while still being clear and easy to understand.

I was fully invested in Zoya as she applied and interviews for the job in New York and praying for her as she struggles to gain individuality and independence while planning an arranged marriage in the Indian culture.

Eye opening, funny, and heartwarming. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a feel good read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 4.5 stars

The Rules of Arrangement focuses on Zoya, a career driven woman, who is on the rise in her job. And while her family thinks that’s great, they’d love if she could also be on the rise in her love life too. But then Zoya hits the jackpot, she gets matched with man of her parents’ dreams and the opportunity of a life time with a job in New York. But she can only have one.

While I absolutely loved Zoya, it felt like their was something missing from the story. Zoya was fun, relatable, and someone you would actually want to have as a friend in real life. But I can’t exactly pinpoint what was missing from the story exactly. I liked it and enjoyed listening to it (the audiobook is excellent), but that element that would normally keep pulling me back to a novel was missing. The only thing I can point to was that the novel may have been moving a bit too slow for my preference, but I’m not sure if it was that.

Book:⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narration: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be honest, it took me a bit to get into this audiobook. I wasn’t sure if I liked the narrator and the story wasn’t clicking with me. But I gave it time and I’m so glad I did! I greatly enjoyed Zoya’s story and am now eager to read the sequel.

The writing style was unique - almost a stream of consciousness from Zoya, the main character. I think this new-to-me style is why it took me a bit to get into the book, but after a while I fell in love with it.

I had a love hate relationship with the plus sized nature of this character. Being plus sized myself, there were times when her thoughts on her size had me nodding my head and I felt so understood. Yet, there were other times when I wanted to roll my eyes and make sure the author knew that being plus sized doesn’t have to define every area of someone’s weight.

One of my favorite parts of this book was that it took me a long time to figure out where the story line was going! I kept reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen to Zoya next. While I didn’t always agree with all her choices, I did understand them all. She was a very relatable character!

I was conflicted about the narrator. I appreciated that it was an Indian narrator and true Indian voice. However, the pacing felt a bit off and the distinction between speech and narrative was a bit fuzzy.

I enjoyed this audiobook and felt like it gave me a glimpse into India. I’m curious to know what what Indian bookstagrammers think about it!

Disclaimer: I know some people can see a ⭐️⭐️⭐️ review as a “bad” review. Not for me! When I say ⭐️⭐️⭐️ I mean that I would recommend it to friends if the books topic and genre aligns with their interests. So if you like rom-coms or are curious about India or arranged marriages, READ THIS!

❓Whats your favorite book that takes place in modern day India❓

Great narrator, lovely story! Zoya is a smart, professional woman living in Mumbai. Unfortunately, her family sees her only as overweight, too dark & too independent. The marriage they arrange for her is less than ideal & she now needs to decide what she will do.

Zoya and I could probably be BFFs. As I was listening to The Rules of Arrangement, I just kept thinking how much she and I would have a fabulous time exploring a city and eating our way through our tour.

I appreciated Zoya’s commitment to her career and her independence, regardless of her meddling family. (Okay, I also love her meddling family - especially her auntie.)

This was such a fun book to listen to. Shazia Nicholls was a great narrator, and her accent really brought India to life while still being really clear. There were a few times when I felt her pacing was a little off for the text, but nothing major.

I definitely found myself laughing out loud while listening to this book, but also cheering on Zoya as she applied and interviews for the job in New York and struggles for her individuality and independence while planning an arranged marriage in the Indian culture.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the advanced listening copy of this book!

This book was a delight to listen to the. The narration was excellent and the story engaging. Zoya is pushing 27 and feeling pressure from her family to be matched for an arranged marriage. She is at the height of her career and doesn't quite know if she wants marriage, but is willing to give it a shot to appease her family. As Zoya navigates the arrangement she comes to learn about herself, her family and what she truly wants out of life. This was an empowering story demonstrating that women can have it all.

At twenty-six, Zoya is an independent, up-and-coming ad exec who's in no hurry to marry. But in Mumbai, where arranged marriages are the norm, she's under tremendous pressure to marry before she's considered too old. The fact that she's dark-skinned and curvy is another mark against her.

She's interviewing for her dream job based in New York City when she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. She has to choose between following the expected path, and pursuing the life she wants for herself. Putting herself first could mean shaming her family and destroying any chance of marriage in the future. But how can she bear to spend the rest of her life wondering what might have been?

This book challenged me to put aside my cultural biases so I could relate to Zoya's dilemma. In so many ways, she seems very modern. It's hard to imagine how she could allow the expectations of others—which she doesn't hold herself—to limit her. And yet, the stakes of defying her culture are high, and not only for herself.

This novel is strongly focused on the main plot, so be prepared to be immersed unrelentingly in this cultural tug of war from beginning to end. Zoya's internal world is rich and vibrant, so you experience everything as powerfully as she does. It makes for compelling women's fiction. The audio is also well done.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the audio ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: DNF @ 10%

I was really excited to listen to this book, but it disappointed me. I couldn’t listen to it anymore, and had to put it down. I stopped around 10% because there was so much body shaming between the characters. It didn’t seem like it would get better. I’m so disappointed because I was looking forward to listening to this. I thought it would be a great read from the description, but I was let down.

Hands down the best audiobook I have read this year. I loved it so much that I bought the print book because I want to see the author's magic on the page. The narration is powerful. Character voices are distinct, and the actor captures every emotion and every nuance. A true joy to listen to! The story itself is one we are familiar with: a modern woman struggles in her fight for independence and her loyalty to tradition: career vs family, job vs. marriage, unknown path vs. charted waters. What Bhatia brings to this is a character who is instantly my best friend (or, at least, I would like her to be!) and whose candor and wit pull the story forward with reckless abandon. Layered and filled with characters I won't soon forget, The Rules of Arrangement is a feast of a book.

The Rules of Arrangement by Anisha Bhatia follows 26-year-old, Zoya, trying to navigate the pressure of her family’s conservative Indian ideals of a woman. This book looks into issues such as body image, the expectations of women, and eventually doing what makes you happy.

funny, relatable characters, and good dynamics
I found the dynamics between Zoya and her close family to be comforting and enjoyable to listen to. The characters developed well through realizations and you would always find yourself rooting for them. I really liked the inner dialogue of Zoya throughout the story and as she gains the independence to go and live out her dreams despite the societal pressure to do otherwise. The romance, though slow-burning, was cute but I feel like some of it could have moved a little faster. While I think the representation of how society views plus-sized people, especially women, is important, it felt a bit forced at times. The resolution though satisfying was rather easy to predict and I really wish Zoya had a better resolution to her own view of her body.

-This was the first audiobook I had listened to and I found the narrator easy to understand and just fast enough to not lose interest.

The Rules of Arrangement examine the Indian culture of arranged marriages. Zoya is a career driven woman who does not want to be bothered by marriage. As she is reaching the age of thirty, her parents and aunts are pushing her to find a husband stooping for nothing until she is married. Throughout the story, there are hilarious twists and turns as Zoya finds her way through dating, arrangements, and new relationships. This is an outstanding book that brings to light the pressure on women to leave their careers behind for marriage and motherhood. It also examines the cultural changes that are beginning to be made for many young women.

I am definitely someone who finishes books; it’s a rare thing for me to do. My DNF list is maybe, like, four books long? Well, it’s up to five now because I just could not force my way through The Rules of Arrangement by Anisha Bhatia. I’ve read several books based on arranged marriages in different South and Southeastern Asian countries and I was able to get through those with little issue. My problem here is with the amount of fatphobia even within the first four chapters (as far as I got).

Zoya has a great job, one that she’s good at. Her loving, well meaning family clearly love her, but at 26 it’s becoming clear that her viability as a bride is heading downhill. Even after a promotion at work and the potential of moving to New York, her family are more concerned with how well she will marry. Her auntie and mother spring potential suitors on her with no warning and has to endure the downplaying of her own successes in order to impress her potential in-laws.

This is literally as far as I got. The blurb summarizing the plot mentioned the titular arrangement and the “Holy Grail” of suitors, but my attention didn’t hold for long enough. As a person who’s been fat their entire life, I choose not to introduce myself to stories whose plots feature heavily the judgement or distaste for any sort of body type. I’d read a handful of reviews on GoodReads and while many of them didn’t touch on fatphobia as an issue, there were a few which did, and yet I still attempted to read this book. Zoya remarks on her size constantly as if that is the reason why she’s not married because her family remarks on it. At the same time, she has no problem internally commenting on the pudgy dowdiness of her aunties or the aunties of others. She’s fat and dark skinned which somehow devalues her.

“A fat salary totally offsets being fat.” That is an actual quote her auntie made to her before one of these on-the-fly suitor meetings. This was also when Zoya’s mother and auntie admit to altering one of her favorite outfits in hopes that she’d look slimmer and Zoya spent the entire time uncomfortable and even ripped her outfit by breathing too deeply. This family she met was awful, remarking on her dark skin and essentially making demands of her as if the wedding were tomorrow. She’d have to become vegetarian; her name was “too muslim”; she was expected to quit her job in favor of her husband’s career and their eventual children.

I didn’t understand something about Zoya’s family. Her mother, who was described as brilliant and did things like study law in secret because it wasn't allowed for women at the time, was now an educated professor of law. This same woman, while proud of her daughter for her promotion, took it and spun it into another reason Zoya would make a good wife. Look at her, she’s smart and successful, but you still need to be married like, yesterday. At 26, Zoya described herself in terms of a product in a supermarket, losing value the older she got. Did she want to be a spinster, still unmarried at 40? She’d be in the back of the store on some clearance rack to be forgotten.

None of these things made me want to read further. Does Zoya in fact get out from underneath the weight of tradition? Does she get married or follow her passion to a job in New York? I’ll never know because I could not force my way deeper into such fatphobic content.

This was a wonderful slow burn. I loved Zoya’a evolution towards independence. There was a lot of discussion about weight and dark skin, which may be triggering. Her relationship with the aunties was funny and touching.

Book Review:
Anisha Bhatia's novel, The Rules of Arrangement, uses memorable characters and detailed setting to bring to life an engaging story about the struggle between staying true to one's culture and following one's dreams. The details of this book were wonderful, bringing India to life in vivid detail. I loved Zoya, her intelligence and determination were admirable. I could also relate to her struggles to feel beautiful as a plus size woman in a world that tends to value thinness. This book grappled with a variety of issues and I appreciate how each challenge was handled in a way that was true to Zoya as a character. This book was a fun read and worth reading if you’re looking for a great women’s fiction novel.

*Thank you to the publisher and author for an advanced copy through Netgalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

Brief Description
This is a contemporary romance about an Indian woman, Zoya, who is feeling the pressures from the expectations of marriage from her family and society. She has a fulfilling work life and has confidence in her professional abilities. However, in other areas of her life, it wavers. When she gets the opportunity of a lifetime and an arranged marriage proposal, she must make some decisions on what is important, what sacrifices she is willing to make and how to balance her own desires with those expectations imposed on her.
My Thoughts
There we some parts of the this book that I really enjoyed like the views into the culture and some of the funny dialogue. But I had a lot of issues with the character’s focus on her weight and more so how she never really addresses them. I think the “fat talk” is supposed to be humorous but it’s harsh and cringeworthy. The negative self talk is exhausting to read, to be honest. Further, she never works through her emotions around food and her weight. It’s a constant barrier in everything she does. The romance was meh at best. There wasn’t much in the way of relationship building or connection. It was more about her story and the family and culture. I was looking forward to this book and I’m glad I read it. However, this isn’t one I would recommend on this topic.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to read and view this novel. I truly appreciate the experience
https://www.instagram.com/dani.reads.too.much/
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4129396354

I only made it 3 chapters in. The amount of derogatory body descriptions and fat shaming was unbearable. Insulting and describing people whether you like them or not is simply grotesque, and in this case, the author writes it as if it’s meant to be humorous.

This book is problematic and I will not recommend.

I didn't like this book, unfortunately. Not for me. Maybe I would have liked it more if I was able to finish it, so this review is only for what I've finished which was about the 60 to 70% mark when I finally just decided it wasn't what I would enjoy. As a plus-size woman, I might have taken it a little too personally.

This had really great potential to be a good story, but I just can't get past the fat phobia. This book is about an Indian woman who is too fat and too dark and she's getting too old to be married. Zoya's family is determined to find her a husband, but they all make so many comments about how large and humongous and gigantic and fat she is. It was absolutely awful. And the worst part about this is that if this fat phobia had been challenged at any point, this would have been a decent book. But alas, not a single time does anyone stand up for Zoya and she barely stands up for herself. Zoya is fine with her body. She loves food and is unapologetic about it. She doesn't really have any qualms about being fat except for the fact that every single family member she has and all of the secondary characters, besides two, constantly make comments about her body or about the food that she eats. It's exhausting.

Now this whole book is set up to provide a conflict between arranged marriage and a woman's career and her freedom and love. And if it's even possible for a woman to have freedom, career, and love. There's a lot of cultural discussions and tons of wonderful moments about Indian food. But I can't get over that no one challenged the pathophobia. There's even a moment towards the end where zoya's very thin cousin makes some comment along the lines of "If my fat cousin can do all this, then I should be able to eat whatever I want " and no one stands up to it. They all just brush it off as oh she's jealous or some bullshit. That is not okay. This is not okay behavior from a fat author. This is not okay behavior for fat representation.

I am so frustrated because Zoya is a great MC. She has a thriving career and she is wonderful at what she does. She has a burgeoning romance that could be adorable if it was ever given a chance to be on page, and she is finding family members who will support her no matter what. But they all still maintain this attitude that she is less than because she's fat. And that's not even going into the comments about skin tone and how she has darker skin and then that's not okay and it's less desirable. What kind of freaking crap is that? Ugh I am just annoyed at this one.