Such Big Dreams: A Novel

Reema Patel

May 2022 · Sold by Ballantine Books

About this ebook

A savvy former street child working at a law office in Mumbai fights for redemption and a chance to live life on her own terms in this “smart, haunting, and compulsively readable” (Amy Jones, author of We’re All in This Together) debut novel about fortune and survival.
 
“A heartbreaking yet hopeful story about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of insurmountable odds.”—Etaf Rum, New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man

With a sharp wit and sharper tongue, twenty-three-year old Rakhi Kumar is nobody’s fool. Sure, she lives alone in a slum and works as a lowly office assistant for the renowned lawyer, Gauri Verma, who gave her a fresh start. But she’s come a long way from her childhood on the streets of Mumbai. Most important, she’s busy enough to distract herself from the nightmares of a grisly childhood incident that led to the disappearance of her best friend.
 
Fiercely intelligent, Rakhi could be doing so much more than making chai, but she allows herself to be underestimated by her colleagues at Justice For All, Gauri’s cash-strapped rights law office. These days, it’s becoming harder for Rakhi to keep her head down as Gauri desperately tries to save her organization by recruiting former Bollywood actress and infamous nineties “thong girl,” Rubina Mansoor, to be their celebrity ambassador. But not all money is good money. Convincing Gauri to make increasingly brash moves, Rubina demands an internship for a young family friend, Harvard-bound graduate student, Alex Lalwani-Diamond. An ambitious, naïve rich kid with a savior complex, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him “the real India.” In exchange, he’ll do something to further Rakhi’s dreams, in a transaction that seems harmless, at first.
 
As old guilt and new aspirations collide, everything Rakhi once knew to be true is set ablaze. And as the stakes mount, she will come face-to-face with the difficult choices and moral compromises one must make in pursuit of self-preservation, and ultimately, survival. Such Big Dreams is a moving, smart, and arrestingly clever look at the cost of reclaiming one’s story.

Ratings and reviews

This was a wonderful debut novel by Reema Patel! I so enjoy being able to learn about different countries and cultures and both were very evident in Such Big Dreams. Rakhi lived on the street for five years as a child after running from her father. She ended up making friends on the streets and was accepted by a group that included her new best friend Babloo. After a terrible accident occurs, Rakhi winds up in a girls home where she is then noticed by a social justice lawyer. Gauri sees great potential in Rakhi and hires her to work at her law firm. Now at the age of 23, Rakhi works as an assistant to a well-known lawyer at Justice For All. When Justice For All hires a new spokesperson, things at the firm begin to change and they aren't all changes that Rakhi agrees with. Will she be able to continue working there given how she feels about some of the proposed changes? Will she be forced to make decisions that could change the course of her life? This was one of those books that made you feel on so many levels. You felt true emotion and that is the best thing you can do as a reader. You feel like you're immersed right in the story with the characters. This is one I would highly recommend picking up.

So much sadness, this story hurt my heart, although the main character persevered through out it all. The descriptive conditions and scenery is excellent and pulls the reader into the heart of poverty in all its variants. So much disappointment does not tamp the spirit of Rakhi, who throughout this story does her best to move on and ultimately affects the lives of others around her with hard found generosity. . Good debut book. A definite addition to your TBR list.

About the author

Reema Patel holds a BA from McGill University and a JD from the University of Windsor. After working in Mumbai in the youth non-profit sector and in human-rights advocacy, she has spent the past ten years working in provincial and municipal government. An excerpt from Such Big Dreams, her first novel, won the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she currently works as a lawyer.