Not another live laugh love moment in the best way. Thirty, anxious and back at home, Sunny is trying to figure herself out. An amalgamation of complicated friendships, disaster dates and the ever growing pressure to settle down with a nice man has her at the end of her rope. Sukh Ojla throws emphasis on the anxiety inducing state of being that ties into hitting your thirties, looking for love, ever evolving friendship dynamics and ultimately the relationship a woman has with herself. Sunny faces numerous trials and endless pressure, from friends, family and most of all herself as she deals with heartache and starting to learn about her boundaries. I think this puts into perspective a painfully accurate part of life, the growth and change of the relationships around us and the fact that, if they are not healthy, they become unsustainable. Sunny learns more than anything that her boundaries and needs are equally valid to those of the woman she has surrounded herself with and by doing so, starting to reclaim some of her self worth. She grows bolder, and the acknowledgment that speaking her mind and knowing her values is empowering. As well as this we see her finding some important moments of joy and the recognition of those doing wrong by her is completely eye opening. Additionally we see the relationship between Sunny and her mother shift as she starts to open up to her and get support when her struggles with her mental health get too hard. The book offers valuable lessons in setting boundaries, support and true friendship that those who may be feeling up in the air right now could really need. It’s thought provoking, great, fast flowing writing and easy immersive reading.

Everyone should read Sunny. It's a funny, moving and important novel, and I loved every minute reading about her. The narrative grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let you breathe until the end… I read this book in one sitting. I stayed up until midnight devouring this book.

The story
Sunny is a 30 year old Sikh living back at home outside London with her mother and father. She leads a double life, telling her parents what they want to hear rather than sharing the fact that she only dates white men, has mostly white friends and eats meat when she is out. But the endless awful dates are bringing her down, and friends that are insensitive to her culture, and saying insensitive things about her lack of a partner are getting to be too much for her. The dead-end customer service work she does makes her feel even more trapped. Will Sunny be able to meet the right person to settle down with or does she need to make peace with herself and her family first?

My thoughts
So many parts of this story just made me heartsore. The guys that Sunny dates and then agonises over don’t come close to appreciating her feisty nature. The skinny culture amongst her family and friends doesn’t help. It just felt to me that Sunny really needed to find her own tribe and had somehow been shoved into a place where she wasn’t around people that did her any favours. I appreciated the honesty about the soul destroying-ness of dating, and being surrounded by happy couples as well as the unique challenges of being a depressed Sikh in an Anglicised world. Sunny is funny even when she isn’t trying to be. I suspect there is a lot of debut author and comedian Sukh Ojla in this beautiful and honest story. ❤️

Thank you to netgalley for allowing me access to these books, thank you to the publisher and the author for giving me access to this eARC.

Apologies for the late review life has been crazy.

What can I say about Sunny, I think she is very relatable and funny with many 3d aspects that make her feel so real I could touch her. This book gave me the brown sisters vibes by talia hibbert and I was down for it. This was beautifully paced and described its perfect, I will be buying a physical copy.

Have you ever wanted to give a fictional character a great big hug and tell them that it's okay to not be okay? That's how I felt whilst reading Sunny.
Sunny is a thirty year old Sikh woman trying her best to navigate through life. She is single, overweight, has a dead end job and lives with her parents. Her Mama wants her to find a good Punjabi boy and settle down. She feels the pressure to find Mr. Right and has several dead-end dates.
Sunny sees the people around her who have no financial worries and are either in secure relationships or are married. In Sunny's eyes, they all look impeccable with perfect hair and looks and have their lives sorted. Sunny struggles with low self-esteem. She portrays to everyone else that she is bubbly and happy, but she is faking it. She has a secret relationship with food and binge eating. Sunny also holds onto friendships that are way past their expiry dates. She slowly begins to find these friendships suffocating as cannot be herself in front of them.
The turning point in the book for me was after Sunny gets fed up (to put it politely) of being frowned upon for her opinions and actions. Why should she put up with toxic behaviour towards her?
Sukh Ojla has written a remarkable book. It is witty in parts with such a relatable and endearing character but it is also deals with serious issues, the crux of the matter being mental health.

I fell in love with Sunny immediately and couldn't put the book down - the best thing since Bridget Jones! I loved the detailed descriptions of life in Gravesend, plus the ham-sandwich meal deals and gins-in-tins that Sunny relies on to keep going. For fans of Queenie and Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? this book takes an unflinching look at the body image and mental health of a thirty-year-old Asian woman in a style vaguely reminiscent of Meera Syal's underrated Life's Not All Ha Ha Hee Hee of twenty-some years ago.

My only quibble with the book is that after Sunny's horrendous weekend at the spa hotel with her friends and subsequent emotional breakdown, the book does not really go anywhere, apart from Sunny's acceptance of herself - and her parents' acceptance of her, but as they clearly adore her anyway and she's a lovely daughter, it's not much of a leap. She doesn't get a new job or man, and I also wasn't sure what was going on with new friend Beena who seemed a bit flirty with her? - is there something else about herself that Sunny has yet to discover? I do hope so, it would make a banging sequel!

This book has inspired me to seek out more of Sukh Ojla's theatre and comedy online, which I'm sure will also be a treat. Five stars to Sunny and Hodder Studio for publishing this gem.

Thank you for my arc!

Are there even enough words in the world to describe how fantastic this book was? Cute, fun, so unbelievably touching. This is the book everyone needs to read this year.

Loved it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t finish this book. I struggled reading the negative body image issues and although I completely understand that this is a part of life for many and can be a start in an eventually positive character arc, I wasn’t in the mindset to read about it.

A thoroughly entertaining read that approaches the concerns that many young women face; battling family expectation, fickle 'friends' and boy trouble, it's not easy being a young and ambitious woman nowadays. Sukh Ojla approaches her topic with humour but also a heart-wrenching realness that any woman can relate to. Very enjoyable read! For fans of QUEENIE

Just fabulous! An ode to finding yourself amidst a life of other people’s expectations; it’s warm and funny and heart breaking and joyful. I absolutely adored Sunny and I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I adored this book, it was funny, heartbreaking and raw and I loved it. The writing was good, the storyline was good and the characters were well developed especially the protagonist Sunny who I loved and took straight to my heart, she is so relatable and endearing. I loved it.

I blitzed through this book over the weekend as I just could not get enough. Light and witty I enjoyed every second. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this arc with much anticipation, as I have seen the author in her stand up comedy shows a few times, and she has always hit the nail on the head about being a young, British Asian, single woman.
The premise of Sunny, is a thirty-year-old British born Indian woman, struggling to fit in with the stereotypes of the East/West background she has grown up in.
Add to that, the pressures to feel like she should look a certain way, act a certain way, live her life a certain way.
But it's the double life she struggles with and those pressures above? Doubled.
Sunny wants to be like those friends of hers, settling down with their partners of choice, finding that intimacy that you only have with your soulmate.
She also wants to keep her parents happy, and not overstep any mark that might bring disrespect to her family, or her parents in particular.
Cue trying out all the dating apps, kissing many frogs, but not finding her Prince Charming, then clambering back into her 'home clothes' and wiping her make-up off before getting home, to where she is living, again, with her parents. And going out with her friends, with that 'emergency kit' forever with her, to mask any activity her parents would disapprove of.
At home, life is so much simpler, until Mama comes in, with her wanting Sunny to find a suitable boy, and settle down,
What follows is a story filled with so much laughter, as you relate to some of the situations that Sunny gets herself into, including hesitantly allowing her mum to get involved in her online dating, even letting her look at 'Tindles'!
But there is more at the heart of this.
Sukh Ojla deals with much more than the funny side of bagging a man so you can have that Big, Fat Indian wedding. There are unspoken expectations about how a girl should look, what she should say, how she should behave, and how these weigh heavily on someone mentally and emotionally. She touches on mental health, and the hidden depths of depression that can hit someone who is loaded with the pressure of expectation from all sides.
Being a resident of Gravesend for the last twenty years, I can vouch for the authenticity of how my marital hometown has been described, from the local Indian sweet shop to the town centre, the gurdwara to the promenade!
Sunny is a fantastic character, in herself, but the cast around her are equally amazing. I love her Mama, who is that quintessential Indian Mummy (Gravo style) complete with the samosa making skills, and Yoga class friends who are forever gossiping. Her Dad is equally wonderful. Quiet, unassuming, but a pillar of strength, regardless.
Sunny manages to find some real pieces of work, on her hunt for Mr Right, but she also learns a lot about other friends she has, and the new ones she makes.
(There were times I wanted to slap certain 'friends' of hers!)
Most of all, she finds herself, and I absolutely loved the ending!
I can't wait for another from this author!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Warning: mild spoilers ahead!

Sunny, the main character in Sukh Ojla's book, is a main character without a main character syndrome. And I loved it! This very refreshing story is written from a perspective of a young Brown woman who found herself living a double life - one concentrates around navigating friendships and romantic desires, the other is related to her family and her identity as a first generation immigrant. Sunny's situation in this book - looking for Mr. Right and failing at it, struggling with mental health, surviving friendship break-ups and figuring out what her right career path should be - is very relatable. It's not an easy escapism, where the plot is sugar coated and everything turns out right.

Sunny's hero's journey is anything but stereotypical. As readers, we are faced with grey areas of consent in sexual interactions, cringe-y dates and unexpected turns of events in various relationships. Oh, and the main character is a fat woman, which is still quite underrepresented in contemporary literature as well. Instead of portraying her as an extra, a "fat friend", playing a supporting role, but never the lead, Sukh Ojla puts Sunny in the spotlight, making her a multi-dimensional character, who is not always perfect, but "fat" is not her personality trait, just a feature that at times comms with its own challenges.

To me, "Sunny" is a story about discovering empowerment in unexpected but overall more realistic places and building a strong relationship with oneself before finding "The One".

This was such a fun relatable book. Especially for people in today’s generation.
Premise
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'.
I could so relate to Sunnys journey kind of always but on the happy facade, but paddling to the death underneath. It was such a fun, heartfelt, and as I said relatable book. It was fun to see Sunny get her happy ending: