Reviews
🦇 Lies and Other Love Languages Book Review 🦇
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
❝ How did mothers go from being rocks you relied on to being the rocks you had to climb over to make your own way? ❞
❓ #QOTD What traits have you picked up from the women around you? ❓
🦇 When Vandy Guru's daughter Mallika suddenly disappears, she becomes frantic to find her, unaware that Mallika doesn't WANT to be found. Tired of failure and life as the family black sheep, Mallika signs up for a genetic study (run by the man she not-so-secretly loves), only for the results to unravel her life. Rewind the clock and we meet Rani; a woman with a troubled past who becomes far more than Vandy's best friend. In Vandy's journey to find Mallika and Mallika's quest to find answers, both are forced to confront the secrets of Vandy's past. Separately, these three women journey from LA to Mumbai to discover who they truly are.
❝ All my life I had defined myself as one person. Then I thought I didn’t even know who I was. Now I don’t want to define myself. I don’t want to label what I can and cannot do and be. I just want to do and be. ❞
💜 Sonali Dev is a MASTER at weaving three related timelines and POVs into one seamless, heartfelt story. This story blurs the lines between friends and family in a tale of love, sacrifice, and secrets. As with her previous novel, The Vibrant Years, this story creates a tangled web between three generations of women before guiding readers on a journey of revelation. There's a distinct artistry in Dev's prose that draws you in and keeps you enamored page after page, but truly, it's the heart infused throughout her stories that captivates. I've read 80 books so far this year, but this is the first to trigger tears.
🦇 Maybe it's because I've read Dev's previous works (she's an auto-buy for me, so if you haven't already, I totally recommend The Rages Series), but I anticipated the reveals sooner than I liked. Both the name mix-up and Vandy's secret weren't big surprises. The little breadcrumbs are perfectly laid out, but I'm sure avid readers can recognize where the story is going with just a taste. Really, it's the last few chapters that kept me from awarding this five stars. Without getting into spoilers, I feel that Rani's secret was misplaced. Her actions in one of the story's last chapters felt out of character. It wasn't a surprise reveal so much as a disappointment.
🦇 Recommended to anyone who loves powerful stories about family, female friendship, finding your purpose, and love. If you haven't read any of Sonali Dev's books yet, I recommend adding them to your TBR ASAP. They're not to be missed.
✨ The Vibes ✨
💜 Family Drama
💜 Twists and Turns
💜 Female Relationships
💜 Self-Discovery
💜 Multiple POVs/Timelines
💜 Contemporary Fiction
🦇 Major thanks to the author @sonali.dev and publisher @amazonpublishing for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #LiesandOtherLoveLanguages #SonaliDev
Highlights
“Maybe it’s time to see the lies for what they were: acts of love,” he said. “And no one is better at love than Vandy and you.”
The reason I felt like a black sheep had nothing to do with genetics. It was 100 percent being intimidated by the perfection I perceived in my parents’ marriage, my mother’s success, and everyone else’s lives around me. I was so focused on the perfection around me that I forgot what was actually beautiful in my life.
All my life I had defined myself as one person. Then I thought I didn’t even know who I was. Now I don’t want to define myself. I don’t want to label what I can and cannot do and be. I just want to do and be.
“Dancing is storytelling. Sometimes when I dance, life’s truths become clear to me.”
I had forgotten how to stand on my own feet since you took my hand. Now your hands were full.
You run from the truth so it doesn’t ruin the version of truth you’ve chosen to believe.
I’m Frankenstein’s monster, pieces sewn together, with no idea what fuels my beating heart.
How did mothers go from being rocks you relied on to being the rocks you had to climb over to make your own way?
He’d once told me that the single most important thing in life was to know what you valued, and once you got that, to never forget you had it.
It was probably the single most important thing in any relationship: the ability to make each other smile when there was pain.
From the very beginning his words had been the end of her. Then it was his actions that had held her tight.
You never leave your past behind, and yet you must.
There’s this thing my mom talks about: how to root yourself in this moment. To not jump ahead in time or fall back into the past. Jumping forward is anxiety; falling back is depression. Count your fingers and stay here in the now.
Maybe not addressing our past is stupid. Like trying to build a tower without digging a foundation. He picks up a cookie from the plate, breaks off a piece, and slips it into my mouth, and suddenly I want to dig this foundation. I want to pour myself into it like concrete. I want to flow and set into the crevices and corners of all these things I’m feeling.
You care about why you do things. You think about why things matter.
He just said “when” and not “if.” The word hangs in the air between us like a suspended star. His obsidian eyes glitter with it.
They’d been good at that, at dissecting problems, dismantling them and letting solutions appear from the pieces. Together. They’d done it with the letters. They’d done it with the plots of his books. They solved problems, didn’t create them.
Some people rescue dogs; my family rescues remnants of the feudal system.
Nonetheless, he’d at least launched and stayed airborne, not a jet but a hang glider. And here I was, a dud rocket.
Every dancer is as unique as a musical note, a building block; each movement is a piece in a larger composition. What I do with each dancer and each move, which voice I give which note: that isn’t random; it’s an artistic choice.
To take her own advice and find a solution without getting lost in the problem.