Published: 3 March 2022

Author: Sukh Ojla

Published by: Hodder & Stoughton

Genre: Women’s fiction

Length: 352 pages

Reading dates: 20-23 February 2022

This actually is a love story, just not the one Sunny was looking for . . .

Sunny is the queen of living a double life. To her friends, she’s the entertaining, eternally upbeat, single one, always on hand to share hilarious and horrifying date stories. But while they’re all settling down with long-term partners and mortgages, Sunny is back in her childhood bedroom at thirty, playing the role of the perfect daughter. She spends her time watching the Sikh channel, making saag and samosey with her mum, hiding gins-in-a-tin in her underwear drawer and sneaking home in the middle of the night after dates, trying but failing to find ‘the one’.

She juggles both lives perfectly . . . on the outside, at least. But when her mum sees a guy dropping Sunny home one evening, Sunny’s life gets a little complicated. Now her mum wants to know about the life she’s hidden from her for so long.

Sunny is well versed in lying to her friends, her family, and, above all, herself. But how long can she keep it up for? Or is it finally time to start being honest?

I’m thrilled to be kicking off the blog tour today for Sunny by Sukh Ojla.

Sunny is a 30 year old Indian woman who has found herself living back home with her parents in Gravesend with a dead end job and a hankering after an old flame Michael. Her friends are all settling down and getting married and Sunny goes on many disappointing dates with men she has met on Tinder. She often eats to make herself feel better but doesn’t always like how she looks.

Sunny looks at the pressures of modern life for a young Indian woman who wants to meet a man but is limited in her choices and is feeling the pressure of her culture to get married as soon as possible. Despite her upbeat persona, as the book goes on we can see Sunny is quite obviously depressed, and it is such a shame her friends don’t recognise this. Her best friend Natalie who lives in Newcastle is her saviour, but her older friend group are unable to have any sympathy for Sunny and let her down terribly.

Some of the dates Sunny goes on are just so awful – the way the men she meets treated her made me furious, especially Michael. I did like it when her mum got involved in her dating life, swiping on Tinder (Tindle) and looking at an Asian dating website. And that she backed off when she realised it was upsetting Sunny, standing up for her, telling her she doesn’t have to worry about marriage.

Sunny isn’t the sort of book that ties up everything neatly in a bow – the ending feels like Sunny’s story is just the beginning. Sunny is an amusing but bittersweet novel about love, family, friendships and mental health. I loved her character and her relationship with her mum especially, and was routing for her. If there is a sequel planned to see what happens next, I would love to read it!

Thank you to Ollie for inviting me on the blog tour and for my copy of the book. Please check out the other blogger reviews below:

About the author

Sukh Ojla is a comedian, actor and writer. Her first play Pyar Actually toured nationwide in 2017 and 2018. She has performed on Jonathan Ross’s Comedy Club, BBC 2’s Big Asian Stand Up Show across the BBC Asian Network. She has appeared on Mock The Week (BBC) and Sorry I Didn’t Know (ITV). In 2019, she took her debut solo show For Sukh’s Sake to Edinburgh, which received rave reviews.
Sukh is currently on a nationwide tour with her new show Life Sukhs. Sukh is well connected in the entertainment and media world. She has written for Stylist, the Tez O’clock Show and Big Juice (Merman). She recently appeared in Series 2 of The End of the F**cking World, Gameface, Black Mirror and EastEnders.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sukhojla
Website: https://www.sukhojla.com/