Sonali Dev is an author I heard about for quite some time before picking up her first book. Most of my major books blogs were raving about Dev's writing, but as someone with no interest in watching Bollywood movies, I figured a book series labeled Bollywood would not be my cup of tea. But boy howdy, was I wrong. I dearly love a good angsty romance. And Sonali Dev can deliver that in spades! Set after A CHANGE OF HEART, A DISTANT HEART can nonetheless be appreciated on its own. Although Goodreads does not list A DISTANT HEART as book 4 in the Bollywood series, it clearly is, including many of the same characters from book 3 A CHANGE OF HEART.

While Dev's books are presented as romance, they feel like crossover genre reads to me. Women's fiction, mystery, and romance combine with the joy of learning about a rich culture I am not intimately familiar with. Dev's books are lush pageants of color, taste, and emotion. A DISTANT HEART feels more firmly in the Women's Fiction camp with a romance enlivening it, rather than a "simple" romance. Much of the book is beautifully heart-wrenching.

Kimi and Rahul struggle with so many challenges that both unite them and separate them. Class distinctions in their native Mumbai, terrible medical disease and uncertainty, and loss. Yet there is the presence of hope and dreams, of friendship and love. This book brings me to tears over and over. Tears of both sorrow and of joy. There are a lot of raw emotions here that really illuminate the underlying messages of hope and connection. Dev's A DISTANT HEART will be a book that lingers in my heart for years to come, whispering words of love and complex emotion.