Grown Up Pose Blog Tour

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A delightfully modern look at what happens for a young woman when tradition, dating, and independence collide, from acclaimed author Sonya Lalli.

Adulting shouldn’t be this hard. Especially in your thirties. Having been pressured by her tight-knit community to get married at a young age to her first serious boyfriend, Anu Desai is now on her own again and feels like she is starting from the beginning.

But Anu doesn’t have time to start over. Telling her parents that she was separating from her husband was the hardest thing she’s ever done—and she’s still dealing with the fallout. She has her young daughter to support and when she invests all of her savings into running her own yoga studio, the feelings of irresponsibility send Anu reeling. She’ll be forced to look inside herself to learn what she truly wants.


Source: advance e-galley provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review


Anu questioning her life and what has become of it is nothing out of the ordinary. I think many of us do that at some point when we finally have a moment to look around and take stock of things. For Anu it was realizing that everything she had built thus far was because it was expected of her, simply doing things to make her parents happy. She felt stifled in her marriage and got to a point where she didn't know who she was. Separating from her husband and making space for herself was the first step in whatever journey she was about to embark on. Except now months later she's still drifting because she hasn't yet found the answers.

A chance meeting outside of a yoga studio initiates a change. Making a new friend and then stumbling upon the opportunity to run her own yoga studio might come from left field but it also makes some sense as she's always loved yoga and this could be a way for her to create something of her own. She makes an impulsive decision which immediately sets her anxiety loose. Being that she's still kind of a mess emotionally, it takes a few starts and stops before she finds her footing.

I think Sonya Lalli has a knack for writing characters who are at difficult crossroads in their lives. Grown-Up Pose has echoes of her first novel, The Matchmaker's List. In both cases, she’s not afraid for her protagonists to be flawed, flounder or fail because after much soul-searching they’ll eventually pick themselves up. Grown-Up Pose spoke to me on so many levels and I enjoyed going along on Anu’s journey. Anu got so lost in the routines and going through the motions that she lost sight of the good things she had. She needed to sort of lose all that before she could fully appreciate the choices she'd made. 

Grown-Up Pose is a very grown up book about the difficulty of adulting and responsibility. It's not all dower, though because it's also about making space to create good things in your life. We're always growing and evolving, and as Anu discovers for herself, having the right people beside you make all the difference in the world.

~ Bel