Almost Single

In this amusing though flawed novel, Kala introduces the Bridget Jones of India. Aisha Bathia is an independent 29-year-old single woman living in New Delhi working as a guest relations manager at the five-star Grand Orchid Hotel. The job seems fabulous, but in reality the hours are bad and so is the pay. And Bathia's life as a modern woman is small compensation: a 29-year-old woman in India is not supposed to be unmarried. With her two best friends, Misha and Anushka (recently divorced from her cheating husband), Bathia searches for love, trying everything from online dating to fasting during Karva Chauth, the traditional Hindu festival for married women. But Bathia has her eye on only one man, Karan Verma, the handsome investment banker from New York, even though as things move along she begins to question exactly what she is looking for. While the romance scenes are not very tense or romantic, Kala hits a bull's-eye with the situations Bathia and her cohorts finds themselves in. With a plethora of disappointing chick lit novels out there, Kala achieves what many cannot—she makes her readers laugh aloud. (Feb.)