Review: The Startup Wife

The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"No one wants to be married to the guy everyone thinks is going to save the world."

Asha is a skilled coder and drops out of a PhD program to start an app with her high school crush, at the same time they decide to marry on a whim. Cyrus only wants to be involved if they can "do things differently," and goes on to be the guru-CEO of their company that helps people create rituals and connect outside of a traditional religious background.

I like the combination of start-up culture with marriage dynamics, the guru persona and what it's like to be connected to it, and then the author even writes in the pandemic (which works perfectly with this start-up!)

You may recognize the author from historical fiction novel A Golden Age which is set in 1971 East Pakistan; I read that at the end of 2019. Both books include women who are in a high-stress situations but they have very different feels and sensibilities.

I had a copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss, which I sought out after seeing it on The Millions' list.

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