This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Vasha. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

Here is Vasha's review:

Rachel Fizel is as surprised as anyone when, hearing Pari Sadashiv talk about the difficulty of staying in the US short of marrying someone, she blurts out “I’d marry you.” What prompts such a proposal to someone she barely knows? Just doing a favor (with financial benefits to herself), or an instinct that’s truer than she realizes? If the two women go through with this plan, they’ll have a lot of distrust and uncertainty to overcome before they figure out what they really mean to each other.

Rachel, an MFA in film now working for a low-status studio, narrates the book in the first person. This is her first potential relationship with a woman (Pari on the other hand calls herself a “gold star lesbian”—American slang for one who’s never slept with a man). And as we soon learn, Rachel is a recovering anorexic who’s not holding herself together as well as she likes to think. Her illness colors all her thoughts, in a mess of doubts, self-hatreds, and distorted ideas. It isn’t simple to figure out, and it isn’t simple to fix; she’s not entirely well at the end of the book, either. Her habit of trying to hide herself is a great obstacle to opening up to Pari. But Pari is great about accepting this aspect of her, especially in a heartwarming scene at the end.

It took me a while to warm up to Rachel’s narration. Frankly, it isn’t always pleasant to be in the head of someone who’s so consistently down on herself. And although Rachel is excellent at conveying how gorgeous, elegantly poised, kind, and breathtakingly sexy Pari is (not that she’s perfect—she’s sometimes immersed in work when at home, and her poise can harden into coolness), it’s harder to understand what Pari would see in Rachel. That’s precisely because we’re seeing Rachel through her own eyes; if she doesn’t find anything lovable about herself, how should we? Eventually, though, her genuine love of filmmaking shines through her self-deprecation, and we see her being competent at work and empathetic with other people; we learn along with Pari to treasure her rare moments of unselfconscious happiness. And there are the times that being with Pari lights her up, the times they laugh together or dance in perfect synchrony.

There’s nothing tepid about this romance; the UST is thick in the air, and the emotional connection (when it happens) is deep. Here’s a quote from early on in the book, illustrating the maybe-it’s-not-real-but-I-wish-it-was uncertainty, as the two of them tell Pari’s parents over Skype that they’re in love (yes, they decided to lie to her parents—I found the mixed motives that led Pari to do so understandable, if disappointing):

Pari laces our hands together. It’s only when she lifts them above the level of the camera, to display in the picture, that I realize it’s just for show. I swallow. She brings our combined hands to her mouth and kisses my knuckles. The kiss is as light as fairy wings, and as reverent as taking mass. The way she looks up at me makes my stomach swoop.

“She’s the most positive person I’ve ever met, Papa.” She looks back at the screen. “Not blindly positive though. She’s hopeful even through the darkness she carries with her. You’re going to admire her, Amma. Just give her a chance.”

Later in that scene:

Pari turns to me with her eyes going huge. “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” she whispers.
“It’ll be fine.” I bump my shoulder against hers. “I can have a white dress this way. I’ve never had a reason to wear a fancy dress.”

“Not ever?”

“I skipped prom. I’ve worn nice dresses, but never a ball gown.”

We’re in our own little world again somehow. I know on one level that Pari’s parents are avidly watching us, but I’m not paying attention to them. Pari’s hand is hot in mine, and she’s rubbing my knuckles with her thumb. I don’t think she realizes, but I do. I realize with every inch of my hand. I’d pull away from the way it’s making me feel, but Sadashiv and Niharika would wonder at our cracks.

That’s what I tell myself, at least.

If we are to fairly consider this book, we do have to think about the issue of biphobia. I felt a twinge of reflexive annoyance when Pari reveals that she is hesitant to get involved with Rachel because she thinks Rachel is straight. Bisexual erasure is all over this book; when Rachel makes her initial offer of marriage, everyone listening laughs and assures Pari that of course it can’t be taken seriously, because Rachel’s not gay, wasn’t she just dating that guy who ran a club? And Pari says that her mother, of all people, advised her not to “mess around with straight girls” (in Pari’s words). Pari had an experience which is kind of a cliche in lesbian stories: her last relationship was with a woman she’d befriended who had just broken up with her husband, and who apparently used her for a combination of convenient bedwarmer, interesting novelty, and middle-finger message to her husband—and then went back to the husband. But anyhow, after that, it’s clear why Pari would be warily looking for signs that when Rachel takes her to bed, it’s likewise a case of just-because-she’s-there. And the fact that she puts this fear into biphobic terms is, well, so common in the real world that it’s completely believable.

Is this point of view endorsed by it being established, later on, that Rachel never really was into any of the guys she slept with? Probably, but Rachel’s experiences are described with so much individual detail that it doesn’t seem that way; everything she did and felt previously makes sense according to her own, often-messed-up thinking.

Speaking of cliches, we have the enormous-ethnic-family going on too—Pari’s mother alarms Rachel by proposing a minimum of 300 guests at the wedding, from the extended family; this contrasts with Rachel’s small and scattered WASP family, consisting only of a childless uncle and her own chilly, distant mother, living symbolically in Alaska. But when Niharika arrives, and later other members of the family make brief appearances, they are given individuality. There are mentions of Tamil Hindu wedding customs that baffle Rachel, but we don’t learn much about them because Rachel is too unsure of herself to ask for explanations. By the time the wedding actually happens, though, Rachel and Pari are sure it’s exactly what they want, and Rachel will be carried through her bewilderment by happiness.

I can’t emphasize enough how well written this book is, especially the dialogue. As a bonus, we get a good picture of the setting (southern Orange County near Laguna Beach—Rachel is a native California girl).