Gorwn-up Pose
By: Sonya Lalli
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 352
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this novel.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): A delightfully modern look at what happens for a young woman when tradition, dating, and independence collide, from acclaimed author Sonya Lalli.
Adulting shouldn’t be this hard. Especially in your thirties. Having been pressured by her tight-knit community to get married at a young age to her first serious boyfriend, Anu Desai is now on her own again and feels like she is starting from the beginning.
But Anu doesn’t have time to start over. Telling her parents that she was separating from her husband was the hardest thing she’s ever done—and she’s still dealing with the fallout. She has her young daughter to support and when she invests all of her savings into running her own yoga studio, the feelings of irresponsibility send Anu reeling. She’ll be forced to look inside herself to learn what she truly wants.
First Impressions
I read Lalli’s debut novel, The Arrangement, last year. I remember liking it but not being crazy about it. The story and the cover caught me for sure and I was intrigued. Solid first impression.
What I thought
I really enjoyed this book. There are some problematic storylines/character moments but overall I really enjoyed everything.
Anusha is Canadian-Indian, 30 years old, mother of a 5 year old, and semi-recently separated from her husband Neil. Anusha and Neil got married young and she has only known the life of being a good wife and mother. When she and Neil separate, she realizes it is time to figure out who she is and live her life to find out if she is a grown-up.
I’m going to start with a few of my issues with the book. My first issue is, well, when it’s boiled down to it, Anusha’s immaturity. It causes a lot of problems that I think could rub a lot of people the wrong way. The first is that she goes to take a yoga class at a random studio, and after she takes a one-on-one class, the owner comes in and offers for her to buy the studio and she considers it! Like, she just has the disposable savings that she can just buy a yoga studio with no thought about it whatsoever and doesn’t even consider the fact that she knows nothing about running a business.
A little later in the book, Anusha has a bit of a mental break and literally days after signing the lease on the studio, she buys a one way ticket to London, abandoning her daughter, husband, job, and home without a second thought. She just up and leaves with no idea where she’s going or when she’s coming back. The irresponsibility that stems from her immaturity is just, baffling. Like, I understand being in a position of trying to recapture a youth you’ve never had, but at the same time you need to accept where you are. You can’t just up and leave your child. After talking about this with a few of my friends, I think I was able to forgive and understand Anusha a little more than my friends were able to, so I think this could be a big sticking point for some people when they read this book.
One part that I related to was her separation with Neil. I have been in a very similar position, so I understood a lot of her thoughts and feelings regarding her marriage. I also saw a lot of the flaws in her thinking and her actions. I couldn’t figure out through the entire novel whether or not she and Neil were going to end up back together. Lalli had me guessing until the last pages.
While Anusha could be a very problematic character, Lalli does a great job of having her thought process explained. I felt like I understood where Anusha was coming from with all of her actions (except maybe abandoning her daughter) and that made it easy to relate to her. I also haven’t read a lot of novels about people who are separated from their husbands and what they do during that time, so that was fun to read. If you have gone through a separation or a mid-life crisis, I think you would really enjoy and relate to this book.