Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

This is yet another Pride and Prejudice retelling, as evidenced by the title. It seems to be a popular thing to do of late, but they've all been very good, so I'm not complaining! This one, more than the others, really deconstructed the story and put it all back together in a unique way.

Probably the biggest change here is that while Darcy is still a man with a younger sister and no other family, the roles of the two families have been switched. Darcy is the poor one, and Trisha (Lizzie Bennett) is the rich one. Wickham still plays the villain, though in a slightly different manner, and Darcy is not the friend of Trisha/Lizzie's elder sister's beau. (Though the elder sister does still have romantic problems!)

I really liked the swapped roles; it made for a radically different plotline than the story it's based on. What I did not like is the lack of sparks between DJ/Darcy and Trisha. They butted heads like they should, but unlike the original and most of the retellings, I didn't feel the underlying sexual tension. Trisha seemed more enamored of DJ's cooking than of DJ, and I don't know what DJ saw in Trisha at ALL.

The author also kept pulling me out of my immersion in the story with her repeated use of “XXXX” was what I WANTED to say, but of course I didn't say it, instead I simply replied “YYYY.” Just - over and over, with multiple characters. I appreciate you're trying to show us what they're thinking vs. what they're saying, but change it up.

I did enjoy the book overall; I love seeing other cultures take on this trope, from the Pakistani Unmarriageable to the Brooklyn African-American Pride, to this mix of Indian-American and British-Indian. I think Unmarriageable was my favorite of these three, but it really was excellent.

So this was good, but not outstanding.

You can find all my reviews and more at Goddess in the Stacks.

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.)

Mostly a 3.5.

I had read books by this author before, but long ago that I don't remember much about them. However, when I read the synopsis for this one and realized it's a desi retelling of P&P, I was just so happy. I also loved that this was set in US, because I can relate more to diaspora stories these days than those set completely in India. And this one both impressed and frustrated the hell out of me.

Trisha is an accomplished neurosurgeon who takes immense pride in her job but is quite socially inept. She also immensely loves her family, but has a lot of guilt for something that she did fifteen years ago which affected her brother Yash and soured her relationship with her father. She is compassionate and a problem solver and I loved her relationship with her sister and cousins and her grandmother. However, despite working hard to achieve her goals, she has been born to extreme privilege and it shows. She also frequently puts her foot in her mouth because she isn't good at talking or expressing her feelings.

DJ is a chef who has left everything he worked for and is almost bankrupt trying to save his sister suffering from a tumor in her brain. He feels almost spiritual about his cooking and takes immense pleasure in seeing people enjoy and appreciate his food. He has also suffered a lot in his life, bullied and tormented and left homeless by his own father's family, so he feels very hurt when Trisha makes insensitive comments about him and doesn't see his concerns in tricky situations because of her own privilege. That makes him retaliate with his own harsh words.

Both these characters hurt each other a lot, both knowingly and unknowingly, argue all the time and even though I saw that they were attracted to each other, I didn't completely feel invested in their relationship. I just wanted them to stop hating each other. Even though they both are good people, I think I wanted to be convinced that they could be great together too, which I didn't get in the book. Their getting together felt too much like the end of P&P and I don't think that translates well to a contemporary setting.

The author does a good job bringing the Raje family to life. We get to know their history, how the kids have been brought up, their beliefs and values and I think it was all well done. The family is very close to each other and I think that reflected on the page. The author also shows that despite being good people and working towards the betterment of society, both personally and politically, they all are still creatures of privilege and can be tone deaf and insensitive to other's issues. For all their talk about family loyalty, they are all very quick to judge Trisha for her choices and make her feel more guilty all the time and I didn't like it. Trisha is such an accomplished woman in her thirties but cowers in front of her father, and even though we are taught in our Indian culture to be very respectful of parents, I particularly hate when parents take advantage of this and emotionally manipulate their children which is what happens here. Even though everything works out towards the end, I think Trisha should have grown a bit of a backbone and stood up for herself instead of everyone just behaving as if it was all ok now.

This book is only a loose gender bent retelling of Pride and Prejudice which focuses mostly on the character's pride and prejudices. It is a mostly realistic portrayal of different kinds of families and how class privilege can affect the perceptions of people towards others. Just don't go into this expecting a lot of romance. It is an interesting read and I didn't wanna put it down at all, but I also wanted something more from the characters.

4.5 stars

Was totally ready to give it 5 stars until this moment,

“There's no place like Africa to set your head straight,” Vansh had declared

This moment including the whole discussion surrounding her trip to Malawi played uncomfortably into Western stereotypes about ‘going to Africa to find yourself' and it just irritated me. Had to bump it down 0.5 stars, which is a shame because I genuinely loved this book.

Give me a good Jane Austen retelling any day! Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors is inspired by - you guessed it - Pride and Prejudice. Sonali Dev does a delightful job taking inspiration from the classic while also making the story her own. In the novel, Darcy James “DJ” Caine is a working class chef who dropped everything and moved to California to support his sister Emma, who has a brain tumor. Trisha Raje is Emma's surgeon and part of the family employing DJ as a caterer. Their first encounter in the kitchen of the Raje estate leaves both with an unfavorable impression of the other, which only worsens in subsequent encounters. When the two are forced to work together on an event, Trisha begins to be irresistibly drawn to DJ despite the animosity between them.

While it doesn't take much for me to enjoy stories inspired by Austen, I particularly enjoyed this one. I love how Dev reworked the characters (including gender flipping!) while still leaving them recognizable and also without feeling the need to reproduce every person from the original book. Everyone feels so real and relatable, and getting both Trisha's and DJ's perspectives help the reader clearly see how easily we can misunderstand and wrongly judge people when we don't know them. You don't have to be an Austen fan to enjoy this fun, sweet, romantic novel!