The Bandit Queens, by Parini Shroff

This book was recommended to me awhile ago and I finally got to read it. I usually really enjoy novels set in India, and this one has a great premise — a woman who is suspected of murdering her husband (she didn’t; he just disappeared) is approached by other women in the village who want help getting rid of their unwanted husbands also. It was a quick and engaging read, though it felt a little tonally off in some places — I guess it’s the kind of “dark humour” (there are actual deaths involved) where it can be hard to strike that balance between the humour and the darkness. The husbands certainly deserve it, as they are in some cases very abusive, but it still felt like the author was trying to walk a bit of a tightrope between an empowering comedy of sisterhood, and a darker tale about abuse and murder. I enjoyed reading this but I had reservations.