Long outcast from her childhood home and friendships, Amaya is surprised to receive an invitation to her once-best friend’s wedding. She hasn’t been in contact with Kaavi for years though the two had once been inseparable. During that time, Amaya, now living in America, has retreated into herself, sealing herself off from relationships to the point that her closest friend is someone she only interacts with online.
Kaavi on the other hand still lives in the gilded neighborhood of Colombo, the capitol of Sri Lanka where the two grew up. She is now an influencer goddess, chronicling her every moment on social media. Beautiful and fashionably dressed, her life seems to be one amazing Instagram post after another. And to Amaya’s dismay, Kaavi is marrying her ex-boyfriend.
In “You’re Invited,” author Amanda Jayatissa takes us into the upper crust of Sri Lanka society, the ultimate one percent where life is lived in mansions filled with servants, closets are filled with designer clothing, and weddings, such as Kaavi’s upcoming nuptials, are over-the-top events that go on for days, Amaya returns home to her own empty mansion where just one woman lives—the servant hired by her father who deserted his wife when she was dying and left his daughter alone while he started a new life and family in England. Amaya isn’t there to celebrate the upcoming wedding. She is determined to stop it from happening.
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Jayatissa, who graduated from Mills College, California and then lived in London before returning home, is master of twists and turns as she demonstrated in her first book, “My Sweet Girl.”
“I was a weird child,” Jayatissa told me during a Zoom conference call from her home in Colombo, offering an anecdote to prove her point. “When I was nine I locked myself in the bathroom during my birthday party so I could finish a chapter in the book I was reading.”
The books she consumed included the Nancy Drew mystery series, novels by R.S. Stein who wrote the Goosebumps books, and such series as Famous Five and Secret Seven written by Enid Blyton, a British author who was extremely popular in Sri Lanka when she was growing up.
“My parents thought I was too serious,” she said, recalling how she was always writing with a pink gel pen in a pink notebook. “But my mother, who was very liberal and ahead of her time, let me read anything I wanted except for Archie comics. She hated that Veronica and Betty were always fighting over the same boy.”
It may seem that Amaya and Kaavi are fighting over the same man, but in reality, there is something much deeper going on. Amaya learns that Kaavi didn’t invite her, indeed she doesn’t want her there. Someone else sent the invitation. She hears rumors that despite Kaavi and her family’s opulent lifestyle and the astounding amounts of money being spent on the wedding they may be bankrupt. Add to that, Amaya isn’t the only one who is out to ruin the wedding. It’s a surface world where all looks great but there are many dark secrets about to be discovered.
“We’re expected to mourn romantic relationships when they end but looking back at my life the friendships I’ve lost with my girlfriends can be even more painful,” said Jayatissa who besides writing, works as a corporate trainer and owns a chain of cookie stores.
She also is working at mastering another skill.
“I’m also, at the tender age of 35, learning to ride a bicycle,” she said, noting that the current government melt-down in Sri Lanka has left the country without gasoline to fuel their cars or their stoves. “It’s the only way now to get around.”
