I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started to read this. But this is a delightful book. I really enjoyed it.
It is set in India and tells the story of a famous sitar player, Mahek, as she goes about her musical business. A lot of practice, touring/performing and recording. She is an Indian Ice Queen – famed for her aloofness, ability to concentrate only on her musical career. She is the daughter of the most famed sitar player of all time and sees this as a responsibility and a burden. She must be perfect. She has had relationships with women before but ended these to concentrate on her music and to avoid people finding out she is a lesbian.
Enter Isha – a travel vlogger.
Mahek and her musical partner, Shekhar, bump into Isha and they spend time sight seeing together. Shekhar then arranges for them to spend more time together ( he makes himself useful like that).
It takes a while for Mahek to allow herself to enter a relationship, but then of course it does not run smoothly. She, in possibly true Ice Queen fashion, breaks her own heart before realising what she wants and needs to do. Inevitably everything works out well in the end. Mahek comes out to her parents and the world in order to win the girl back.
We travel around India courtesy of their careers and are treated to descriptions of some delightful places (some of which are now on my travel wish list).
Strangely, this book contained a lot of stuff that meant it shouldn’t have worked. But this made it work all the more (for me). There’s a lot of what I suppose could be called ‘info-dumping’ – but this made it even better. There’s a lot of information about India, the beauty of the countryside, the architecture, history, and local food and drink. It should come with a playlist – I had to find my own sitar music to listen to while I read it.