Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

At first, I couldn't get over the really traumatic things that are part of the backstories of the characters in Sonali Dev's Jane Austen retellings. I still think that the ones in A Recipe for Persuasion are not handled very well. But in Dev's bio, it says she writes “Bollywood-style love stories,” and I feel like thinking of them through that filter helped me. Still, if you have any sensitivity around sexual assault and domestic abuse, use caution. (It's all off the page and in backstory, but several of the characters are dealing with the trauma in present day.) All that to say, I do really like the Raje family at the center of this series, and I think Dev does a good job of capturing the heart of the original novels in these modernized versions. One thing that confused me a bit here is that she gender-flipped the Darcy-Elizabeth roles, but then mixed around some of the story elements. (For example, the male lead, DJ, is the Elizabeth equivalent, but then he has a close younger sister, who would be Georgiana. A little confusing.)