It's not easy keeping up with the Chopras, as Mr. and Mrs. Jha are finding out. They have just moved into a new luxury development in the wealthy Gurgaon area of Delhi, now that Mr. Jha has sold his website for millions. He is eager to leave their humble, cramped apartment in East Delhi and meet more upscale new neighbors, such as the flashy Mr. and Mrs. Chopra. Mrs. Jha is a modest, unpretentious woman who misses the close sense of community they had before, even though their old neighbors could drive one another crazy. Their son Rupak is in America, supposedly studying for an MBA but about to get kicked out of school owing to his lackluster performance. He also continues to keep his American girlfriend a secret from his parents. The novel's subplot involves Mrs. Ray, an attractive young widow from the old neighborhood. VERDICT This is a delightful comedy of manners with a lot of heart; the author seems to be genuinely fond of all her characters, foibles and all. Set mainly in India, the novel's universal theme and very entertaining story should appeal to a wide variety of readers.-Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

It's tough for Anil Jha to break the news to his neighbors. After years living in their close-knit community in an apartment building in East Delhi, the Jhas are moving to an upscale neighborhood, trading the smoky kitchen (and neighbors with their noses in everyone's business) for the leafy green and quiet of a private bungalow. Mr. Jha made a small fortune when he sold a website he created, and he's determined to start living up to his new means. But his wife is less enthusiastic about the changes coming their way, and it seems her anxieties are warranted as Mr. Jha comes down with a severe case of keeping up with the Joneses or, in his case, the Chopras. The Jhas' changing fortunes have repercussions for their son, studying for his MBA in America, and their former neighbor, a young widow who unexpectedly finds romance. In her debut novel, Basu sprinkles her send-up of social mobility in modern India with gentle indulgence for her characters, presenting the foibles of the Jhas with humanity and humor.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2017 Booklist

A middle-aged Delhi couple find themselves suddenly wealthy.Mr. and Mrs. Jha are no longer young when they suddenly come into a great deal of money. Mr. Jha has sold a website he created. The money allows the Jhas to move from their East Delhi housing complex to Gurgaon, a much ritzier neighborhood, where each house has a gate, a guard, and sometimes a swimming pool. Mr. Jha throws himself into their new lifestyle, ordering a couch embedded with Swarovski crystals (which turns out to be as uncomfortable as it sounds). Mrs. Jha, meanwhile, can't convince herself to use the new hot showers, preferring instead to stick with the bucket and mug she's used to. In the meantime, the Jhas' son, Rupak, is studying for his MBA in New York. His parents don't know it yet, but he's failing his classes. Worse, he's trying to balance two women: Indian Serena, who rather resembles his mother; and blonde, American Elizabeth, whom Rupak can't imagine fitting in to his Indian life. Basu's debut novel is a funny, deceptively light treatment of money and manners in modern-day Delhi. Mr. Jha suffers from a bad case of keeping-up-with-the-Jonesesthough in this case it's the Chopras next door, and they've gone so far as to have a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel installed in their foyer ceiling. Then, too, there's Mrs. Ray, a young widow from the Jhas' old neighborhood who is soon thrown together with Mr. Chopra's well-to-do brother, with predictable results. Basu manages these various storylines well, and her writing is sincere. But at times the humor feels forced, strained. Each of the characters is flawed, but those flaws seem to elicit pity rather than sympathy. At a certain point, their moneyed lives don't seem as funny as they do alienating and sad. There's something unsettling about all this that the ending does nothing to assuage, though it seems to want to. The humor seems strained in this comedy of errors, manners, and money. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

When the Jha family, flush with a fortune from the recent sale of Mr. Jha's website, decide to move from the middle-class neighborhood in East Delhi where they have lived for 30 years to the gated community of Gurgaon, they have to confront family, money, and the excitement of conspicuous consumption. ("Why leave a carbon fingerprint when you can leave a footprint?" Mr. Jha queries at one point.) Nankani handles the many characters with aplomb. For Mrs. Jha, a more traditional Indian woman who clings to old ways like having the car keys blessed at the temple and wearing starched cotton saris, Nankani adopts a lilting and more heavily accented cadence; for Rupak, the Jhas' rudderless son at school in the United States, she takes on a flat American inflection; and she creates over-the-top voices for the Jhas' new next-door-neighbors, whom the story presents as caricatures: the status-obsessed but small-minded patriarch, his idle and corpulent wife, and their useless adult son. Overall, Nankani's sensitive narration enhances the novel's portrayal of complex contemporary India. A Crown hardcover. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.