A minor oversight leads an impetuous young woman into a near-crisis, as her family tries to avert scandal by getting her married off to an ineligible man. Fortunately for her, another suitor, far more attractive, steps up, and offers marriage, immediately.
The popular trope in romance fiction, the marriage of convenience, gets a contemporary desi treatment in Three Times Lucky, the third and final book in Andaleeb Wajid’s Jasmine Villa series. Named after the old, shabby, and run-down home where the three Hasan sisters—Tehzeeb, Ana and Athiya—grow up, each book is about the love story of one of these sisters.
Athiya, 24 years old, is impulsive, hot-tempered and adamant that she doesn’t want to get married, ever. When she is offered a modelling assignment through a friend, she sees no harm in taking it up, though she is aware that her widowed father will not approve. Athiya reasons that the photos, to appear in the bridal issue of a magazine, will not come to abbu’s notice—and anyway, she is perfectly decently clothed in them.
She has, however, not factored in other aspects of this fraught-with-risk gamble. For one, there’s the fact that she’s not read the fine print in the agreement for the assignment. She has also not accounted for the mayhem that could be caused when her bossy Aunty Taskeen, her abbu’s cousin, decides that Athiya has disgraced the family by modelling.
When the other shoe finally drops, the protagonist finds herself on the brink of getting engaged to the frightful Maaz, Aunty Taskeen’s son, who looks like “Sid, the Sloth” from Ice Age. In this moment of desperation, who should step up and ask for Athiya’s hand in marriage instead? Farhaan, Ana’s husband’s elder brother, who is also Athiya’s boss, and who she has been finding pretty fascinating lately.
While the relationship between the two is the focal point of Three Times Lucky, Wajid keeps in mind that no relationship in India can be sans family. So, there’s Athiya’s father, sisters, their husbands, in-laws, and more. Many people, many agendas, but Wajid is able to juggle the characters deftly, keeping the spotlight on her lead pair––a delightful case of opposites attracting. Farhaan is quiet, circumspect, dignified; Athiya is a motormouth, speaking before thinking, letting her heart take charge, something that makes her a believable heroine.
This ‘realness’ is one of the most enjoyable aspects of Wajid’s book: people speak the way modern urban Indians do, often bilingual, and with expletives peppering their speech. Pop culture makes its way in, every now and then. Life in a metro, in Bengaluru, to be precise, comes through vividly.
A delightful, utterly satisfying romance novel, Three Times Lucky is a quick read, well-written and enjoyable. The chemistry between the leads is great, the surrounding story is entertaining, and Wajid’s prose is immensely readable.