The Marriage Game by Sara DesaiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
2.5 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Layla Patel is going home to San Francisco after walking in on her social media reality star boyfriend in bed with two women and her throwing his stuff out of their apartment is recorded and goes viral. Home to her family's Spice Mill Restaurant where her mother's tough love and father's hugs will help her get her life back on track. She's planning on using the office above her parent's restaurant to start her own business but when her father has a heart-attack and the previous tenant her dad had rented to doesn't get the news that Layla will now be using the office, she's forced to share with a man that annoys and attracts her.
Sam Mehta is all work and taking care of his sister after an incident leaves his sister Nisha in a wheelchair and him blaming himself. He knows legally the office is his but there's something about Layla that brings out his protective side and other emotions.
It's an opposites attract and a marriage game.
Relationships were for men who could protect the people they loved. Not one so focused on his career that he hadn’t seen the danger until it was too late.
The Marriage Game was a story that started off rom-com, light, and funny but unfortunately, never provided the depth I was looking for. Layla has a big loving family and while there were a lot of characters thrown at me in the beginning, I thought the author did a good job introducing them and giving them enough of an initial spark that I could separate them from each other. The problem I started to have though, was that towards the middle and end, the more important secondary characters were never given any depth. Layla has a loving relationship with her father but after their first scene, he disappears for the vast majority of the book. He comes back in towards the end and the scenes he was in made me wish we had seen him even more because of the emotion he brought. I felt the same way about Sam's sister Nisha, she's the catalyst for Sam's personality and we hardly get any scenes with her and Sam, it was such a wasted opportunity to provide the story with depth and emotion.
Layla laughed, a real belly laugh that ended in a snort. It was the best sound in the world. Why did it have to come from the woman who irritated him the most?
