What the *frock* did I just read??

After more than a decade we finally get a chance to revisit the life, musings, and viewfinder of Dimple Lala - now 19, dating Karsh, and attending NYU for photography. She and Karsh are going to visit India together for Karsh’s big DJ break in Bombay and Sangita’s upcoming nuptials.

And that’s about all that we think we know and will expect from this story. But somehow, everything derails. Literally. And not even the changes and different experiences the characters go through, but the amount of focus Hidier puts on poetic descriptions of pretty much anything you can think of made it so difficult to get through most of it. It was sparingly done in the first book, Born Confused. In this one, it was like she just vomits poetry and alliterations all over. And the altoo faltoo ending? Did her editor call her up asking for something pronto and she chalked something up between huffs? Some passages got so dense that I actually couldn’t even picture what was being described.

Once again, Hidier’s successful dialogue skills shine and my absolute favorite scenes were anything with Dimple’s family. If she wrote just scenes with those characters (using quotes of course) and excluded Dimple and Karsh completely (seriously, who were they in this book?), I would’ve loved it. I mean all of them but her and Karsh - Sangita, Kavita, her parents, her aunt and uncle, even little Akasha. It lacked the pleasant charm they bring to the story because they’re instead relegated to secondary characters barely featured. And my issue with that was that they all had way more interesting stories and issues (read: journeys) than anything Dimple is consumed with.

My other issues were the unrealistic aspects of the story. Dimple, who knows no other language than English and who has only visited India with her parents to stay with her family, independently explores all of Bombay with no language barriers, no maps, no help. Granted, she does travel around from time to time with locals and/or someone multilingual, but she takes a train by herself! I mean c’mon!

Also, this was a small annoyance but it did bother me that the first novel referenced things in the 1990s as happening just a year or so before the events of that novel - when Dimple is 17. In Bombay Blues, she’s 19 and references events of the late 2000s having occurred several years ago. So either someone drank some youth fountain juice or Dimple takes forever to age. Again, not a big deal. I just wonder if she will be able to ever pay off her student loans.

Overall, after great expectations, this became a chore to get through. Would only recommend if serious fans want to keep reading and revisit their favorite characters. Otherwise, just stick with the first one.

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Seems to me this author writes because she loves to read the sound of her voice. Hugely overwritten and grandiose; even the sly, self-absorbed wordplay gets wearying. I can't see this appealing to most teens, maybe just the artsy-fartsy-hipster-hippie ones. An absolute slog. ( )