The Henna Artist

Interesting plot, poor delivery. When I think about the storyline, the customs, and the culture itself, I can appreciate it, but the clinical writing style made it a slog to get through. The extra pages in this book were exactly that. Extra. Character index, glossary, explanation of the caste system, history of henna, recipes. It was a lot. I had to put a post-it on the first page of the glossary just so I could flip to it when necessary. It felt more like a textbook on Indian culture than a novel. I‘m not a fan of books that have an unlikable main character, but great support characters. Lakshmi was either completely unfeeling or simply too dense to understand the people around her, yet she was able to strategize and climb her way up the good graces of the ladies above her caste placement. It seemed disjointed. Malik and the Maharani Indira we're my favorite characters. I would love to read this book through Malik's perspective.