A romance for Romance Week, and a retread of Austenian tales! This was mostly fun, though it took me about 250 pages to realize TRISHA is our Darcy-stand in (which I should've caught earlier given how DJ often thinks she's snobbish). A thing I remind myself is that it's ok to have unlikeable protagonists, and it's even plot important here but wooooooof is Trisha so singlemindedly focused sometimes.

Book had surprisingly heavy bits in it too that I wasn't necessarily expecting in a romance novel (cw: high risk pregnancy, date rape specifically on a male victim) which felt like a tonal change, but maybe I expect the genre to be fluffier in general.

Intrigued enough to read the next ones. ( )

I absolutely devoured this book. Funny enough the romance was my least focus. Not that I hated it,on the contrary I looked forward to it; but my fvorite part was reading about these full fledged individuals. Both Trisha and DJ were completely, fully well actualized real people and I was completely transported in their individual journeys. And even the side characters got the same treatment! Can't wait to read about Ashna, Yash and Emma's future adventures!! ( )

Oh man, another dnf. I just didn’t buy-in to the characters. Good idea, but I don’t think this is her best. ( )

Trisha Raje is a neurosurgeon and the young star of her department -- but she's anything but a star with her family members. At home, she's excluded from her brother's campaign for governor of California because of a mistake she made years ago that almost cost him his career. As the campaign ramps up, though, Trisha is determined to be more involved and make up for past mistakes, even though she's busy at work trying to convince a patient to accept a life-saving surgery that will leave her blind. Trisha will get her chance as her sister, her brother's campaign manager, needs Trisha's help covering for her unexpectedly. Trisha is instructed to work with DJ, the caterer for an upcoming fundraising event. Too bad she already accidentally insulted him. DJ doesn't like Trisha, but he desperately needs this job to pay for his sister's -- Trisha's patient -- medical bills. Will Trisha and DJ be able to get past their differences to work together?

This... was fine. I think it honestly would have been stronger if it wasn't billed as a P&P retelling, because it really didn't succeed in that regard. It was WAY too long (500 pages for a romance is too much) and set-up took forever. The second half was better for me than the first. It was sort of a P&P retelling, but genderswapped, but also disregarded a lot of the plot and changed some points. Maybe if I had gone into it with the idea that it was inspired by P&P rather than a retelling I would have liked it more? I did enjoy some of the side characters and the family, but I didn't love the two main characters, especially Trisha. Also, the random addition of a clairvoyant cousin was odd to me. I also read this for the SPL book bingo prompt of "includes a recipe" and got frustrated because there were no recipes, until the bonus content at the very end -- not sure if that counts, but I'm counting it because I made it through this book. Anyway. I own the second book in the series but unless someone can tell me that it's better (Recipe for Persuasion) I might just give it away unread. 3 stars. ( )

I must qualify this review by stating upfront that I am one of the only women in the world who really did not like [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320399351s/1885.jpg|3060926]. I was tasked with reading a "retelling" for a challenge, and this book just came out and seemed like it might be perfect. Especially since I have loved many books about Indian culture.

Dev does cleverly reverse gender roles here (i.e. Wickham is a woman, the Darcy equivalent character is also a woman). But that didn't really make it better for me.

It just seems like a rom-com movie script put down on paper. I didn't really feel the burgeoning love relationship between a surgeon (Trisha) and a chef (D.J.) at all. Some of the rationales for people's behavior in the book seemed so convoluted and basically a bit preposterous to me. There were quite a few tangential storylines/subplots/backstories that were uninteresting.

There is some attempts at wit, and some were successful . . .but I guess I expected a book that is a retelling of one of the literary masterpieces, to be, well, literary. It's not.

To be more fair, I think if people are looking for an easy beach type romantic comedy read, they might really enjoy this book. As someone who never reads romance, I mostly feel I was the wrong reader for this story . . .so read other people's reviews before dismissing! ( )