Welcome to my review of Sunny by Sukh Ojla. Sunny by Sukh Ojla is, as I expected, a humorous read. It started a little too slowly for me, so much so that I considered not continuing, but I’m happy that I did as it got better.
This actually is a love story, just not the one Sunny was looking for . . .
Sunny is the queen of living a double life. To her friends, she’s the entertaining, eternally upbeat, single one, always on hand to share hilarious and horrifying date stories. But while they’re all settling down with long-term partners and mortgages, Sunny is back in her childhood bedroom at thirty, playing the role of the perfect daughter. She spends her time watching the Sikh channel, making saag and samosey with her mum, hiding gins-in-a-tin in her underwear drawer and sneaking home in the middle of the night after dates, trying but failing to find ‘the one’.
She juggles both lives perfectly . . . on the outside, at least. But when her mum sees a guy dropping Sunny home one evening, Sunny’s life gets a little complicated. Now her mum wants to know about the life she’s hidden from her for so long.
Sunny is well versed in lying to her friends, her family, and, above all, herself. But how long can she keep it up for? Or is it finally time to start being honest?
Sukh Ojla is a comedian, actor and writer. She has appeared on Mock The Week (BBC) and Sorry I Didn’t Know (ITV). In 2019, she took her debut solo show For Sukh’s Sake to Edinburgh, which received rave reviews. She is currently on a nationwide tour with her new show Life Sukhs. Sunny is her debut novel.
Sunny is a 30-year-old British born Punjabi Sikh woman. She is single, overweight, and living back home with her parents in Gravesend. Trying to fit in with everyone, her family, and her friends, she finds herself living a double life, trying to please everyone but clearly struggling with the physical and emotional demands.
Sunny tries to find the balance between her two lives but finds herself dressing up and going out with her friends and then hiding this and her clothes and makeup from her family. She spends hours trawling dating sites and meeting men, trying to find her soulmate to fit in with her attached friends and find a suitable husband to please her parents. Needless to say, this all sounds stressful enough and then her mother wants to help her with her ‘tindles’ site.
I thought this would be the usual story of looking for love, finding someone and marrying quickly to live happily ever after. Still, it was so much more than this. While I’m not sure if it was the intention of this book, I found the love between Sunny and her mother provided a beautiful love story. Sunny finally finds what she wants and forges forward with her new life, which gives a beautiful ending.
Through great characterisation, I felt like I knew Sunny and felt her pain and troubles along the way. Her life is wildly different from mine, but I could understand her thoughts and feelings and connect with her quickly. Her friends mainly were not friendly people, at times wholly toxic and racist! They were once all very close, but with Sunny’s want to change, we see the changes from her friends and their new attitudes, meaning that they grow apart. There are points where I wanted to give Sunny a big hug and tell her that these people weren’t real friends and move her away from them. However, her new friend seemed better and healthier, and I loved Beena (I really hope that’s her name anyway!)
There is a focus on mental health, the depression that Sunny feels are described numerous times with her having black days where she doesn’t want to get out of bed or do anything. They were sensitively but well defined and a good representation of what those days are like for some.
I enjoyed this read and would recommend it to others. It covers topics of self-love, relationships, and mental health particularly well.
| Title | Sunny |
| Author | Sukh Ojla |
| Series | N/A |
| Format | eARC |
| Page Count | 323 Pages |
| Genre | Literary Fiction |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Release Date | 3rd March 2022 |
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