Admire Anita Rani tremendously. This debut is very readable and I enjoyed it a lot. However, I felt it could have been better, or more - it felt somehow ‘incomplete’ , which could just be me. Will look out for her next novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publishers, Zaffre, for this ARC.

Really nice quick read and great first book by Anita.Loved the cultural/historical references and the area where it was mostly set.

Great book, well written.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

"Baby Does A Runner" by Anita Rani is an intimate and powerful memoir. Rani's storytelling is candid and raw as she recounts her personal journey of identity, family, and belonging, making this book a poignant and compelling read.

I loved this book, Anita Rani has caputured what it is like to be and Indian in Bradford trying to fit in.

What a feel good, yet educational and riviting read this was. I wondered if it would be a Bridget Jones type read and certain elements were definitely like that. However, Baby does a runner is som much more than that. With themes around partition, grief, fitting in, glass ceilings, toxic work environments and so much more, I found this a compelling read from start to finish.
With believable characters, some funny elements (aubergine emojis), heart breaking revelations, family and heart I read this in a couple of days.

I really enjoy seeing Anita on tv so was excited to read this book. The synopsis didn't really seem to match up with the story I read though. The story was both at once, much more serious and challenging than I was expecting and much less frothily romantic.

Baby, who prefers to call herself by her chosen name of Simran, has passed another birthday as a single, career woman, living in Manchester and doing a job she is over-qualified for and should have been promoted in a long time ago. She's having an unsatisfactory relationship with a colleague and seems to spend a lot of time feeling unfulfilled but without understanding why.

A trip back home to Bradford for a 'surprise' birthday tea highlights all her frustrations and also reveals a mystery that she wants to unravel. Baby finds a pile of letters from a woman called Naseeb, written to her grandfather. It's clear Naseeb was once married to Baby's dad's dad (both men are now dead), and she definitely isn't Baby's grandmother (her dadima), who's downstairs making delicious food for Baby's party.

Baby didn't know her grandfather had been married before, but remembering him as a mean drunk, she's obsessed with the fact no one has ever talked about Naseeb and that the Ranjeet of her letters was nothing like the grandad she knew.

Rather than ask her mum and dadima about the letters, Baby decides to go on a voyage of discovery to India, to visit her parents' homeland and see what she can uncover.

Once in India, staying with her aunt and cousin, Baby meets Siddharth (Sid) and despite seeming to belittle Baby's position as a visiting Indian, he suggests he drive her across the country to visit the places she wants to see. Once she reveals the real reason for her trip, to find out what happened to Naseeb, he's even more on board and the inevitable sparks fly.

What happens next is a drive across India with rich descriptions of the country, its architecture, the people, the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty and the customs and ways that were so new to Baby, yet touched something deep in her soul.

This is a story that is absolutely rammed full of Indian terms, especially for clothes, food and religion. Some of which I knew but many of which I didn't. I found myself highlighting so many words and looking them up, finding photos etc that the flow of the story was interrupted - not a problem for someone who is Indian or of Indian heritage, or who knows more than I did.

I got distracted by the rich visual imagery Rani painted and found the threads of the story were stretched as far out as they could go, before pinging back in again. The idea that Baby and Sid could track down the exact records, find (or not) the houses, the people, seemed unlikely to me.

The story deals with Partition, an absolutely abhorrent process that is sickening and mystifying, and I don't know if I feel the balance was right. I was tipped around, is this a travelogue, a romance, an historical novel?

It marries all three, with some added cooking in there too.

Overall I enjoyed the book but found much of it just too detailed, I've never read such a comprehensive list of party food before. I felt like I was driving along a road and suddenly I'd turn off, drive for ages along a very detailed cul-de-sac, just to whip back up the way I came and head back onto the main road for a while before the next extremely detailed diversion.

The one thing that I thought was brilliant and which I keep coming back to, is the fact that with the exception of Sid (and even he's just a foil for Baby), men play only a cursory part in this story. Even the beloved men, like Baby's dad, are on the periphery. He's dead and we only know of him in relation to Baby's deep grief and love for him; Ranjeet is long gone and we never read his letters back to Naseeb, we only know about his character from her. It's the women who hold the story, who educate, who persevere, who love, who are traumatised, who make the biggest sacrifices.

Overall, a love story to India and its women, whether in India, Pakistan or Bradford, with some beautifully descriptive writing and an enjoyable plot, if rooted in man's inexplicable cruelty to women and Mother India.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a preview copy.

Baby is 36, she's got her own flat, independence and a job she used to love. However in the eyes of her extended family Baby needs a husband and children. Discovering a cache of letters held by her grandma Baby decides that she needs to escape to 'find herself' and so visits her homeland of India. What she finds is more than she could ever imagine.
The start of this book is pure froth, albeit froth with a British Asian twist, and it's lightweight fun. The fun never leaves but the book has a lot more substance that I thought it would have. By addressing the reasons why so many Punjabis left India/Pakistan during Partition, Rani has opened up a sad story which also looks into prejudice on religious and caste grounds, not just about race. For that reason I really liked this book as the froth will draw in the casual reader but the meat on the bones makes it memorable.

I really enjoyed this bookl. I loved the insight into Indian culture and travelling to India with Baby and omg the food!

I am not a lover of the celebrity novel, but I am glad I gave this a chance.
it is a lovely, engaging, interesting book.
It made me learn a few things about India and Pakistan during Partition.
And you see Baby go through with her mother and aunts trying to set her up with an arranged marriage.
Baby uncovers a secret which she needs to go to India to uncover.

A really good story which was really well written.
The character of Baby was easy to connect with, and the journey we go on with her is fascinating.
I cant wait to read it again and will recommend it to everybody, it is so good.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC

Baby Saul is a British born Indian woman, living in Manchester with a successful job but less successful love life, she’s stuck in life. When she finds some love letters from her grandfather that are definitely not to her grandmother it leads her to travel to India to find out more.

I really enjoyed this debut novel, once I started I couldn’t put it down - finishing it in one sitting. I

An incredibly satisfying novel. Baby Saul is tired of her job in advertising and marketing, in which she is routinely ignored and not promoted. A visit to Bradford for her birthday leads to her finding some secret letters to her late grandfather from a woman named Naseeb, and she set sabout trying to find out what happened, including a journey of self-discovery back to India. There's nothing completely original here, but the fluidity and confidence of the author's voice drew me in, meaning I was glued to the pages from the very start. The story was also educational, outlining what families experienced during the violence of Partition. I'd thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who fancies a good read.

Baby does a runner is a real treat of a book.
I was interested to see how Anita Rani writes and found - so well I hated putting the book down.
Its easy way it Is like good chick-lit byt then it hooks you in and takes over your mind.

Instead of being written as a worthy, historical tome it is a genrle stroll through modern culture by a local Bradford lass about another Bradford lass. It explains worship and hospitality rituals incidentally so doesnt hinder the flow of the story.
Once Baby decides to go to India it continues to explain what she sees, tastes and experiences. How she finds Sid attractive (don't we all!) Whilst on her quest to unearth history.

A while ago the author was the subject of an Who Do You Think You Are? episode. She too unravelled some of the unspoken history of Partition. It was a gruelling journey and she uses this so well to take Baby there and leave her to delve into her own past.
I particularly liked how amidst the scenic wonders Baby passes we hear her bum is suffering by the Indian style of driving!
It doesn't get too heavy but shows us a time when men turned into monsters and destroyed their neighbours of long acquaintance whilst the women coped i. Their. Own ways although inevitability unrecorded as they did so.

A thoroughly enjoyable story.
I loved Anita's style and I loved the main character - Baby, a British-born Sikh woman.
Baby isn't happy with her life. She feels she is being put upon at work and she is fed up with her mother and all the Aunties trying to set up an arranged marriage, which she is adamant she doesn't want.
Following the discovery of some love letters to her grandfather from an unknown woman, she decides to go to India and find out about her grandfather's first wife.
In looking for her family's secrets, she learns about Partition, the atrocities that took place and how families including her own, were torn apart. A difficult subject to take on, but Anita handles it with great sensitivity.
There are many layers to this story, including romance, Indian culture and some gorgeous food descriptions.
The author had me in stitches one minute and in tears the next.
Highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC.

I am a white Irish woman in her 20's so even though the story was about an Indian woman in her 30's the themes translated beautifully into my own life. Rani paints such a beautiful picture of how difficult some Indian women have to find their place in the world without getting married. The character of Baby was so interesting and complex and I found myself always rooting for her. Her difficulties of people pleasing and giving everything to people who don't reciprocate is accurate.

I really enjoyed her journey to connecting with herself and I will read another book by Rani. She is a talented author who sucks you into her world.

I love any book with British Asian characters at the helm, so Anita Rani's offering appealed straight away.
Baby Does A Runner is a brilliant story about Baby, or Simran; a British-born Sikh woman who is single, in her 30s and struggling a bit with not getting the same opportunities in life as her male counterparts at work, and with the loss of her father.
A secret revealed during a trip home sparks the interest in a fact-finding mission back to the motherland, though it is labelled as a bit of an Eat. Pray, Love type trip.
Baby learns so much about her own feelings as an Indian abroad, as well as one whose family lost so much during the partition. The reason for her trip bears fruit she wasn't expecting in many forms, with truths being exposed, as well as the possibility of a little romance along the way.
So many things dealt with here, but Anita has joined the wave of authors, bringing the voice of British-Asians to the literary front, giving us characters and situations we can relate to.
I thoroughly enjoyed this!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Books for an ARC.

Broadcaster Anita Rani has written an interesting and engaging novel. I enjoyed it very much and particularly details relating to Baby’s family. Baby lives on her own and has an unsatisfactory career. She’s not happy with her life but doesn’t want an arranged marriage. She then finds a family secret and decides to go to India

I wasn’t sure what this book was about but sounded interesting. I’ll admit I couldn’t see where it was going and debated giving up on it. But about a third of the way in it suddenly all fell into place and was a very interesting read about family history of India and Pakistan during the time of Partition, which I had no knowledge of. It opened my eyes to the horrendous struggles of families during this time and I felt was very well written.

I was drawn to the book by its vibrant striking cover and was expecting a fairly generic romcom but ‘Baby Does A Runner’ was so much more, a beautifully heartfelt and personal tale that covers family, both those that are close and those on the other side of the world, your ancestors and their experiences and how that resonates in you, wrapped up with trying to find out who you are and what your place is in the world.

Baby is in her mid-thirties, stuck in a fairly mundane PR job in Manchester, in a situationship with a colleague, despite her mother’s attempts to encourage her to settle down. Baby knows she needs to make some life changes but is unsure what to do. She finds some old love letters to her grandfather from his first wife, who Baby had never heard about, and discovers that her grandfather had had a family before he’d left India. Baby feels this is a sign she needs to go and investigate what happened to his first family and connect with her personal history.

She starts her journey in the bosom of her family, staying with her aunty and cousins. I loved this part of the book, with Baby’s assumptions about life in modern India being challenged at every corner, and the way that her aunt and cousins immediately enveloped her in love and acceptance.

Their close neighbour Sid (tall, dark, handsome, natch) offers to accompany Baby to Amritsar to find out more about her family. Their long car journey is stilted at first but they get used to one another, even surviving a night at a farm in the middle of the countryside when Sid’s car breaks down.

Sid is keen to share his knowledge about Indian history with Baby, sometimes mocking her (unnecessarily I felt) for not knowing her own history. Through a combination of his insights and her own learning, Baby learns more about Partition, and how this brutal part of India’s colonial history ripped families including her own apart. I know almost nothing about Partition and am definitely inspired to find out more having read this book.
I felt a connection with Baby’s search to find out more about her family’s past; as the first generation of children of parents who left their home country, I feel the sense of loss at not knowing my own history, and felt happy for Baby that her bravery on her own journey solidified her sense of self and her appreciation for all of the generations that have been before.

This all makes it sound quite heavy but it’s a much lighter book than it might seem – and of course, there’s the blossoming romance with Sid....

Well worth a read!

Baby Saul is a successful modern Indian woman, with a good job and her own apartment in Manchester. However, she seems to have hit a glass ceiling at work and the death of her beloved father has knocked her sideways. When she finds a bundle of love letters addressed to her deceased grandfather from a hitherto unknown first wife, Baby is determined to get to the bottom of this family secret by going to India and discovering what happened to change the loving man described in the letters into the angry alcoholic she recalls.

Baby hasn't been to India since she was a child and holds many common misconceptions about her ancestral homeland, a fact that her auntie's neighbour Sid takes great pleasure in disabusing, accusing her of undertaking some kind of Eat, Pray, Love journey and mocking her for her assumptions about how backward India would be compared to London.

Despite their mutual antipathy, when he hears that Baby intends to travel to Amritsar alone, Sid offers to accompany her. As an avid historian, Sid is fascinated by the letters which were written in the mid-1940s, the time of Partition and can't wait to show(off) Baby the real India as well as his own knowledge of India throwing off British rule. As Baby learns more about the history of India, and the horror of Partition in 1947, she feels as though a previously stunted part of her has been given room to grow.

I wanted to like this, but I really struggled to understand where Anita Rani was going with this. The romance is fairly weak, enemies-to-love, forced proximity, mixed with a smidge of instalurve. It didn't help that I found Sid to be an obnoxious know-it-all he liked nothing more than to lecture Baby - from the very first moment they met he was telling her she was wrong - who needs a substitute-Daddy? Yes, Baby didn't know much about the British rule of India, but that could be said about the British rule of Kenya, or Barbados - by and large British children aren't taught about the atrocities and oppression of British colonisation of any countries and Baby's family were keen to avoid discussion of the past, they believed moving to the UK had wiped the slate clean and it was a new start for all. Then when Baby learns about the horrors of Partition, it is almost as a throwaway line in a voicemail to her BFF at home in the UK, if Anita Rani wanted to educate her readers about Partition then maybe the novel should have been structured differently? Sid also seemed remarkably silent about the atrocities that former neighbours visited upon each other during partition, or blamed the violence, murders, rapes, etc on the British for drawing an arbitrary line across India to form Pakistan - when the reason for partition was because the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in India could not agree on how an independent India would be run and violence was already escalating in many Indian cities. Now I'm obviously British, so maybe I'm leaning too heavily in favour of my own country.

Anyway, it wasn't really a romance, it didn't really go into any depth about Partition (maybe if she ditched the romance and made it all about tracing what happened to Baby's grandfather's first wife and two children through Partition), it was a little bit Eat, Pray, Love in the way Baby 'found herself' travelling around a foreign country where she barely spoke the language, just because her grandparents and mother were born there. TBH it felt a bit like when Americans claim they are Irish because their great-great grandparents were Irish (and I know I few English people who do the same). Maybe worst of all, most of the book felt like we were being told things rather than seeing them. Even the exhaustive lists of food at every meal felt like it was being rammed down the reader's throat.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.