This is another Red Magazine recommendation – and I was lucky enough to be granted an ARC by Net Galley. Here’s the blurb:

“Grand Life Apartments is a middle-class apartment block surrounded by lush gardens in the coastal city of Chennai, India. It is the home of Kamala, a pious, soon-to-be retired dentist who spends her days counting down to the annual visits from her daughter who is studying in the UK. Her neighbour, Revathi, is a thirty-two-year-old engineer who is frequently reminded by her mother that she has reached her expiry date in the arranged marriage market. Jason, a British chef, has impulsively moved to India to escape his recent heartbreak in London.
The residents have their own complicated lives to navigate, but what they all have in common is their love of where they live, so when a developer threatens to demolish the apartments and build over the gardens, the community of Grand Life Apartments is brought even closer together to fight for their beautiful home…”

This is such a lovely summer read. There’s no sex, drugs or rock and roll in it – it’s a comfortable, safe, pleasant book – but I found it really informative about the city of Chennai and Indian food, culture and lifestyle.

You get to know each of the residents and their back stories as the book develops – and threaded through it all is the fact that Mani, the owner of the block, is being threatened by property developers who are desperate to knock down the apartments so they can develop a new property – as they have done at the sites either side.

Seeing India through Jason’s British eyes, is cleverly mirrored by seeing the UK through Kamala’s eyes when she goes on a trip to London and Oxford to see her daughter.

The respect shown by the younger residents to the older is lovely to see – and the fact that they call everyone Auntie or Uncle when they aren’t even related (I have seen this with friends of Indian heritage too, and in fact there are still people I call Auntie and Uncle as a 49 year old who aren’t relatives, but it’s less common in the UK now!)

It’s an escapist book – transporting you to Chennai from your sunlounger (or wherever you’re reading it from!) I can see it being turned into a perfect Sunday night escapist drama in the future.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC, it was released in July 2023, so you can buy it today.