Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood by Varsha Bajaj

Even the Bollywood echoes aren’t enough to get the story off the hook for its continued implausibility it’s an exhausting venture, as is following the jerky, jumpy prose plaguing this novel. Soon Abby finds herself on the set of a Bollywood film, staying in a mansion, and getting to know both her father and paternal grandmother, all while having to disguise their true relationship to the press.

While he never knew of Abby’s existence (his own father had intercepted the letter her mother sent informing him of her pregnancy), he is eager to make up for lost time, and invites her to India. Together, Abby and her mother track down her father and find that he’s now a huge Bollywood star. She is slightly hurt at her father’s rejection, however, and when a previously undetected coconut allergy nearly kills her, she begins to wonder what other genetic conditions she may have inherited. from India to study, and she’s been happy enough without him, living with her mom in Houston and spending plenty of time with her maternal grandparents.

She knows her mother knew him in college, when he came to the U.S. Ages 9 13.Twelve-year old Abby Spencer is curious about the father she never met. Information about India is laced throughout the story, and although the father/daughter reunion is slightly canned and the dialogue sometimes difficult to swallow ('At first, the hurt and the feeling of rejection felt like shackles that I could never break free,' Abby's mother says of her failed romance with Naveen), Abby's extravagant travels and first romance are enough to satisfy and amuse.

Picture book author Bajaj's (T Is for Taj Mahal) first middle-grade novel conveys Abby's mixed emotions about meeting her father, getting her first taste of celebrity, and visiting India, though not always believably ('The muddy color of poverty was interspersed by the bright blue color of tarpaulin people used to keep the rain out,' reflects Abby about Mumbai's slums). Naveen is equally shocked to hear that he has a daughter (he never saw a letter Abby's mother sent when she was pregnant), and he invites Abby to visit him in Mumbai. Abby Spencer, 13, is thrown for a loop when she learns that her estranged father is actually a Bollywood heartthrob, Naveen Kumar.

Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood by Varsha Bajaj