Book Review: The Mistress of Spices

…by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Tilo is a young woman born with a gift for being able to tell the future. She is trained in the using spices to help others and thus becomes the Mistress of spices with special powers. Once ordained as a mistress, she is immortal but trapped in the body of an old woman. She travels through time to California where she sets up an Indian shop from where she can provide spices to help her customers. However, Tilo begins to question whether she wants to be a mistress of spices or an ordinary woman when she gets an unexpected visitor to her store: Raven. The American. Who manages to steal Tilo’s heart.

I have had this book on my shelf for ages and finally got down to reading it. I must admit, I wasn’t overly excited with it. Sure, it read quite well and I was interested in how she helped some of the people in her store but somewhere along the line, it lost me. I am not sure if it occurred when I was looking for an image of the book cover and I found they had made a film based on the book starring Aishwarya Rai as Tilo. I cannot stand her as an actor and found it extremely unbelievable and maybe her image stuck in my head resulting in not liking Tilo as much as I probably could have. I still liked that Tilo was unlike most women depicted by Indian authors. She seemed to know what she wanted and stood for it. And just for that, it gets the rating I’ve given it.

My rating:

Where to find the book:

Amazon | Book Depository | Booktopia | Fishpond | Kindle

***This has been reviewed as part of the Indian Quills Reading challenge and the Off the Shelf challenge***

Until next time,

Cheers!!!