Marriage & Masti is the third and final title in Nisha Sharma's If Shakespeare Were an Auntie series. It tells the story of Veera and Deepak, best friends and successful businesspeople. The two have been apart for several months, but after a series of dramatic events, Veera and Deepak reunite at a romantic resort in Goa, India, have a few too many drinks, and stage a fake wedding that Deepak realizes feels very real. While they agree to temporarily use the fake marriage to further their own business ends, once they recognize how thrilled their families are with the match, their whole plan is thrown into question.
On the romance novel realism scale, Marriage & Masti rates much closer to bonkers than realistic, but the unrealistic events are charming and feel rational within the world of the story. Unlike many individual volumes in romance series, Marriage & Masti could be difficult to read on its own, since Sharma (Dating Dr. Dil) established the central dramatic plotline in earlier novels. Many characters from the series' first two books return here, too, including the mischievous Mrs. W.S. Gupta, the dating advice and gossip columnist, and, of course, the aunties who swoop in to teach Veera how to be a proper Hindu wife.
The novel skillfully and entertainingly deploys such tropes as friends to lovers, a fake marriage that's also a marriage of convenience, rich and powerful main characters (both Veera and Deepak have black American Express cards), and the male lead falling in love first. Marriage & Masti is an excellent, sexy contemporary romance that will not disappoint lovers of the genre. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller