Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel.

I adored this novel! Brilliant characters with an engaging plot. I think this would make a great one for a book club. Lots to discuss.

This is a great love story that is not a love story at all, in many ways. It explores a number of modern issues that plague our society: social media, islamophobia, same sex relationships, arranged marriages, therapy, parent- child relationships.

I highly recommend this book.

I absolutely loved ‘Love, Marriage’ by Monica Ali. Highly observant of social and cultural mores it was also funny and relevant. The only downside for me was the ending which I felt this was a little too ‘‘perfect’

Wonderfully Dickensian: social history married with strong narrative and character

This was one of those completely immersive reads, where from the off, the reader surrenders to a journey, willingly going wherever the writer is steering events

Though this is about life now in Britain, with its complex of cultural; influences, its many arising divisions and assimilations, I was strongly reminded of Dickens, whose books often exposed the seamy underbelly of his society. Dickens of course knew how to write about serious stuff, whilst never forgetting the power of ‘tell me a story’, the necessity of allowing that story to unfold through believable, complex character, a relishing and a delight in language, and the ability to move the reader with humour as well as with outrage, compassion and a wealth of other emotions

Ali does all of that, and, moreover writes far stronger and more complex female characters than sometimes Dickens tripped up in creating as heroines.

Central character in Love Marriage is Yasmin Ghorami . Yasmin’s parents came from Bengal They wanted to create every advantage for their British born children. Yasmin has become a doctor, like her father. She is currently working through her hospital placements, Her brother Arif is more of a problem, prone to rebellion and to flout parental authority

Yasmin has become engaged to Joe Sangster, a fellow doctor. Joe’s parents have separated, and he has been brought up by his radical feminist, hugely outspoken, liberal intellectual mother, Harriet. Both families are happy, for different reasons, with this match.

‘Love Marriage’ unpicks all easy assumptions about what all the romantic unions, past, present, future in this book, actually mean.

Every character we come to know will have revelations uncovered – not just revelations about their own families, their own relationships with each other, but will also make a journey of self-discovery.

Ali deals with the complexities of prejudice, class, race, gender both overt and covert without writing polemic lectures. And everything is far more telling for that. She also continually upends the reader’s assessment of who each major character is – everyone reveals their nuances, and escapes easy categorisation

This is a highly thought provoking book – and one which brims with vitality, is unafraid to plumb depths, whilst sparkling with fun and humour.

This was an joyful work out for heart, head and viscera; thoroughly recommended, start to finish

I have deliberately avoided much biographical detail of the cast of characters, as it adds to the reader’s pleasure, I believe, to make the journey of getting-to-know-you themselves!

This very readable novel is set in about 2017 London, and is about relationships within and between an immigrant Bengali family and a British family. Both families and individuals are flawed. Many have secrets, some of which they are not aware they have, and either make up stories to hide the secret, or deceive themselves about events in the past.

Ultimately, for me the book is about considering how people act when what they do is based on a falsehood, and how this can lead to resentment and other consequences, and what exactly a "love marriage" is.

With many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy of the book in exchange for this honest review.

I loved this. I've never read Monica Ali before (something I'll be changing now!) so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, other than what was in the blurb. What I got was a compelling and nuanced story of two extremely different families – one an apparently quite traditional Indian Muslim family in north London, the other a wealthy and liberal single-parent family in west London. Expectations are played with and subverted, both with regard to these families and the people they interact with and to the romantic relationship at the centre of the book, to really great effect.

Over all, Love Marriage was a really enjoyable read and a really relatable one. Monica Ali's characters feel completely real and you feel their joys, their frustrations and their devastations as if they were your own. I'll be recommending this to lots of people when it comes out next year.

This book was compelling, thought provoking and hard to put down.

Love marriage is a story which questions the dynamics and nuances of love, family, race, religion and status in an almost conversational manner which begs the reader to question their own beliefs.

The story was easy to get into and kept a good pace with enough of the plot unfolding at each turn to keep the reader intrigued and begging for more. However the ending felt almost anti climatic with such a heavy build up.

While the story was compelling and easy to read, some characters such as Anisah have strong story lines attached to them without enough of their own personas being explored, and other powerful characters such as Rania not having enough of a story line. Coupled with religious anecdotes which felt thrown in and lacking real context, there are times that the story seemed unrealistic but a powerful attempt to disturb stereotypes.

Despite Love Marriage lacking relatability and realism at key moments, the story is one well worth reading in order the explore the various themes covered.

Love Marriage feels like a much-needed antidote to the pervasive black-or-white, right-or-wrong ways of thinking and talking about society.

I loved each of the multiple storylines and struggled to put this down. Each character seemed three-dimensional and had a background; there were no characters - apart from, possibly, Flame - who were there purely as tools or props for other people's stories.

What particularly stayed in my mind was Yasmin noting how her infant niece was being her true, absolute self, and how brief this period will be. Society and its expectations can make life much more complicated than it needs to be, and it can be difficult to be truly yourself.

Sometimes you don't know that you don't know the whole picture. Life is complicated.

Yasmin and Joe, both young doctors born and now working in London, are engaged. Both live in their family homes, Yasmin with her brother and her parents, who came to the UK from India., Joe with his mother Harriet, or Harry. This novel explores the relationship between Yasmin and Joe and their relationship with their families, who couldn't be more different. Yasmin's father is a hard working GP who likes to engage his daughter in discussions about difficult to diagnose medical cases, her mother is a devout muslim who dresses in a sometimes embarrassing mix of western and Indian clothes. Harriet is a Germaine Greer figure, outspoken and famous (like Greer) for having her genitalia photographed for a magazine (like Greer) as a feminist act. The relationships of the parents, particularly Yasmin's and that of her brother are also an important part of the plot.

I came across an interview with Ali when she says of this novel<
It’s a story about who we are and how we love in today’s Britain, with all the complications and contradictions of life, desire and family. It’s about love and marriage and what those things mean across different societies and different generations..I was interested in exploring the relationship between love and marriage and all that entails: romance, desire, sex, betrayal and how the foundations for a marriage are built. The novel also explores different kinds of love: the love between a parent and child, sibling love, love between friends..'
She said she was influenced by Jane Austen whose novels are superficially about romance but also about so much more.

It is an engaging read, with some poignant moments and others that make you squirm, or laugh. It does indeed explore inter-generational and cross-cultural relationships, but not in a way that feels immensely insightful or profound. Overall I'm glad I read it

This is a modern, fresh take on family, relationships and secrets that's really enjoyable to read. There are so many characters with issues and challenges that interconnect with each other to provide a balanced display of all the ways family can hold you back but also hold you up in times of need.

Yasmin and Joe are going to get married, but both have baggage that surfaces before they commit to a wedding date. There are clash and culture clashes from every angle, with so many ideas and threads, some of which are explored better than others but all of which show the messiness of modern life.

Light hearted and funny as well as hard-hitting, this book is a joy to read, a modern day reminder of Philip Larkin's 'This be the Verse' - there are plenty faults on display here, both inherited and self-created, but the intelligent treatment of the faults and their consequences add up to a rich exploration of modern Britain.