Hana Khan Carries On

DNF. This book is really annoying me. I might just be in a mood but it all seems so formulaic and the characters are very stock, so when the protagonist is made a bad driver, I have to nope out. It's such a horrible cliché that women can't drive and makes the character unlikable, when I wasn't endeared by the narrative voice in the first place.

I devoured this one and it was just a delight from start to finish! Rom-com is overused (and often misused) in describing books, but even though this touches on some heavy topics, it manages to have a fun, lighthearted tone throughout. Rashid in particular cracked me up. Not a lot to say here - for some reason it's much easier to write reviews of things I dislike or things that didn't work for me, which means when I love a book as much as I did this one, the review is short.

(2022 Summer Romance Bingo: work rivals. Would also work for mistaken identity, loosely for property inheritance.)

2.5/5

Had to drag myself to the end for this one. I've never seen You've Got Mail so I'm not sure if context would help, but I found there to be simultaneously too much going on and nothing happening at all. Sad because I'm always down for a good rivals-to-lovers, but with how busy the plotlines were the relationships here had little chemistry.

But yo the dulhan with the rifle tho.

I did not enjoy this as much as I thought I would based on reviews by people I trust. I had highly anticipated it, and it was fine – better than fine, it was good – but I figured out an important secret early on, and never felt invested in the characters. It was nice to read from the perspective of someone from another culture and I appreciated it for the insights into the protagonist's culture.