MK Schiller - Unwanted Girl

Recovering addict Nick Dorsey finds solace in his regimented life. That is until he meets Shyla Metha.  Something about the shy Indian beauty who delivers take-out to his Greenwich Village loft inspires the reclusive writer. And when Shyla reveals her desire to write a book of her own, he agrees to help her. The tale of a young Indian girl growing up against a landscape of brutal choices isn’t Nick’s usual territory, but something about the story, and the beautiful storyteller, draws him in deep. Shyla is drawn to Nick, but she never imagines falling for him. Like Nick, Shyla hails from a village, too…a rural village in India. They have nothing in common, yet he makes her feel alive for the first time in her life. She is not ready for their journey to end, but the plans she’s made cannot be broken…not even by him. Can they find a way to rewrite the next chapter?

Comment: This is July's buddy read with my friend H.

We agreed on it because it would feature an Indian heroine and a story within a story about an Indian girl's fate, which means we would have romance and a different culture to read about. I was especially interested in seeing how the author would mesh the two protagonists' cultures into the romance part but this book turned out to be a little more than just a interracial romance.

In this book we meet Shyla and Nick, two very different people who meet when Shyla starts to deliver sandwiches to Nick. After a year, she feels brave enough to start talking to him and they hit it off, becoming friends and later on even lovers.

Their relationship starts in a simple way but upon knowing Nick's a writer, Shyla decides to confide there's a book she would want to write and they start doing it together.

Shyla's story is that of a young Indian girl who lives in a small village and how she must deal with what happens to her. 

However, Shyla's time as a student in America has a deadline. What will happen when she finally needs to return to India?

This story can be divided into two main arcs: we have Shyla and Nick's relationship and we have the story Shyla wants to write and that Nick helps her with. The two happen in mostly alternate chapter from a certain point on.

To be picky and a little harsh, I should say the pace and rhythm of the development isn't the best.

The change of the time in both segments and between one another feels choppy, as if things are happening too quickly for the emotional connection to follow at the same pace.

This means that most of the time I felt as if the story had all the necessary scenes and details to be even more touching but there was some emotion missing.

Despite this, I still had a great time reading the book. 

Starting with Nick and Shyla's relationship, it does feel as if it happens very quickly from the moment they start talking but we are told she has been delivery his takeout for an year or so. Once they establish a connection and become friends, it was easier to believe they were falling in love too but it never really escaped my notice that we had a significantly better notion of Nick's inner thoughts and past than we did Shyla's.

Still, it was easy, by the characterization the author chose, to see how innocent but dynamic Shyla was, so the relationship still felt balanced enough for me.

There are some flaws in how things develop yes, but I don't think it is any secret to any reader, even from the first pages, that Shyla is hiding something and the author has written this in a way that we are not told which secrets could be. Some readers did complain about certain clues being too obvious but in my experience reading, the twist at the end was still a surprise because I imagined two possible scenarios by then and one of them proved right. 

Yes, this would not win "mystery of the year" award but I think it still worked in the context used.

The secondary plot is the one we get to read about through Shyla's novel. It starts very quietly but it does evolve to something hard to imagine. 

We're talking gendercide here, namely female's one. India is one of the countries in the world where the society still maintains a deeply rooted and ingrained cultural habit of preferring baby boys to baby girls for several reasons. Because of this and religious beliefs as well as sociological ones, many families simply dispose of female babies. (While reading this book, I did google some facts, I've read some articles and my western opinions along with my freedom of thought and acting make me furious to imagine the lives of these girls. It's a complete dismissal of human rights but that isn't so easy to overcome if it has been part of a country's for millennium).

Anyway, this little story within the main story makes one think and imagine what choices could there be for those who don't have that luxury.

The mix of the two main arcs is leading to some expected climax but I must say that, for me, some things, no matter how possible even if unlikely, were a little too coincidental. I understand why the author wrote this the way she did, but had she changed a few details, I think the overall style of the story would have felt as if being better done.

I also liked the fact the author wrote this to pretend for a while that unwanted girls like the ones left aside by their families could dream of having a happy ending.

This was not a perfectly done novel, it's not the best it could be but in its simplicity there was proof of labor and caring. I think the two stories could be divided into separate ones and be stronger but I get the point of why this was done this way. There were also some misspelling that distracted during reading and the structure could have been better as well. Still, for a romance this was good enough and did make me think about a subject that it's so easy to ignore but that, sadly, isn't going away.

Grade: 8/10