It's hard to put a numerical rating on this one. The first half was slow for me, despite the lush descriptions of food and cooking. The themes of disordered eating, disfunctional family of origin, romantic entanglement across class divide, secret relationship misdeeds, and female ambition and career drive are all interesting to me, but I felt held at arms length from these characters. I thought I was waiting for "the secret" to be revealed. I was hanging on, waiting for something to keep me reading. Then in the second half everything both fell apart and came together in the most spectacular way. Some scenes at the end were viscerally painful to read, but also the ending felt triumphant and very satisfying. If you are considering DNF, pick up your pace and keep going; the good part is coming, and it's worth it!

I loved Sneha -- her angst jumped right off the page and into my heart. I remember being young and taken advantage of, and I wanted to slip into the book and slap some people around on her behalf. The author did a great job of bringing to life what Sneha was going through and the day to day realities of headlines about recession, immigration, lgbtq+ issues. The last quarter of the book slowed down and it felt like the author leaned away from just laying bare the realities of one particular life and tried to make it all come together to make a political point. Not necessary, Sneaha's life made the point well enough.

Enjoyed this novel so much! I laughed out loud many times, was delighted by the banter, and felt seen by the absurdity of the stream of consciousness of the POV characters. I got most of the pop culture references, and that’s saying a lot, because I don’t know anything about New Zealand or the multiracial identities the characters navigated. This book was so funny and enjoyable, that when, 40- some percent into the audiobook, my player somehow reset itself to the beginning, I just shrugged and started the book over instead of trying to find my place. There was an exhaustive index of characters at the start of the book, which I didn’t use (because—audiobook) and I was able to keep track of maybe 15 or so of the characters. At the end when everything came together and all the loose ends got tied off, I probably didn’t get the full satisfaction because I couldn’t remember all the characters, and I didn’t grasp the full import of their Maaori-Russian-Catalonian identities. If I did some research into the setting and politics and printed out the character map, I certainly would have gotten more from this book-- but going in cold and flowing along with it even when I didn’t fully understand was still a supremely enjoyable experience.