A modern retelling of a timeless classic! Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors is the Desi version of Pride and Prejudice that I didn't know I needed. There's a fun gender flip and a US setting! Recommended to all P&P lovers.

I enjoyed it enough to give it the rating I did. I just wanted more but it didn't deliver like I thought it would. I'm not sure what was missing for me but I gave it a chance.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors is a retelling of the classic Pride and Prejudice. If you're looking for a carbon copy of Pride and Prejudice, this isn't the book for you. Sonali Dev creates a fascinating set of characters whose story somewhat resembles the those of Jane Austen. Trisha is a genius skull based neurosurgeon who has become the black sheep of her ambitious Indian-American family. She has great pride in her skills and her abilities, but her lack of family support causes clear issues. DJ is a brilliant chef who is desperately trying to make his dreams happen while also support his sister. They've been relying on just each other since they lost their mother in their teens. Seeing the lifestyle enjoyed by Trisha and never getting their meet-cute sets these two up for a fraught journey. Dev uses a classic tale to highlight the struggles individuals have with defining their own identity. Daughter, brother, genius, artists, doctor. Who are you and how does that affect your story? I received an advanced reader's copy through NetGalley for an honest review.

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.

I couldn't make it through this one. I got 30% in and called it quits. I think my problem was that I know Pride & Prejudice too well. I was waiting for action between the female and male protagonists to get going. The female protagonist was unlikable and I just couldn't go on this journey with her. If you find it a chore to pick up the book and continue to plod your way through, best to throw in the towel.

A delightfully modern take on Pride and Prejudice with enough twists and surprises to keep me amused and enthralled til the very end.

Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors is a modern retelling of the timeless classic. This version has a unique element. The woman, Trisha, is proud, and the man, DJ, is prejudice. I liked Trisha. She is proud because she's a surgeon, and that's a justifiable reason. She is an intelligent, strong and likeable character. DJ, on the other hand, I despised. At some point, I should have come to like him, like in the original, but that didn't happen. He's just unlikable and garners no sympathy. I understand that the differences between social classes is supposed to be sharply rendered, but prejudice is present in every class and every race. Much of it is due to extreme ignorance, lack of education and an unwillingness to admit or acknowledge that these attributes are present. I see all of this in DJ. His character soured what was otherwise an engaging story. Everything else is quirky and charming and it flows well. The culture is beautiful described, well written and immersive. The place and time have a true feeling of life about them. Overall, I'm just ignoring DJ because he's a drag who brings the review down to a two star,and I think it's better than that. Instead, I'm focusing on the merits of the story. It's a delightful and culturally rich retelling. For the positive attributes, the story is more of a four star. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Gosh, I love Sonali Dev so much and this might be my favorite of her novels (I’ve read them all). Her language is so lush and her storytelling is so assured. I love being able to tuck into a book with full confidence in the author. I know I won’t have to question too confusedly or rigorously what’s happening or what’s being said. This was especially true of this work; Dev knew exactly what’re she was going and I so appreciate and admire that.

There’s even some racial politics here, as our male protagonist, DJ (short for Darcy James) is half-Rwandan and dark-skinned, a matter of both identity and plot, not exploited but explored in a fairly thoughtful (if predictable) way here.

I loved the rendering of the Raje family. With so many members, it must’ve been difficult to give them all such distinct and alive personalities but she did it.

This book has all the fun and angst and romance characteristic to Dev’s best works and everyone who already digs her should devour it. Those new to her work should give this a generous chance; you’re unlikely to be disappointed.

There’s a lot to really like about Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, there’s Trisha Raje and her delightful, beautiful family and the wonderful aroma of the foods featured on the pages, but, sadly, for me, so much of the story got bogged down by an exceptionally angry hero.

Having never read a book from Sonali Dev before-but knowing her Indian background-I picked up Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, looking forward to a culturally-rich story that played off one of my favorite novels of all time. Meeting the Raje family was a delight and they met every expectation I had, from the stoic and proper father to the loving grandmother who counted the days between visits from her grandchildren. Dev brought these people to life and I missed them as soon as I closed the book, especially Trisha.

Trisha Raje is one of my favorite characters that I’ve read in the last few months. A brilliant surgeon who may or may not be on the spectrum, she’s justifiably arrogant about her abilities and completely insecure in her interactions with anyone who isn’t related to her by blood. Despite a self-imposed isolation from many family activities after a bad choice on her part years ago that almost destroyed her brother’s political career, she’s dedicated to her family, loves them unconditionally, appreciates good food, and is loyal to a fault. Her passion for medicine and healing pulsates off the page, but it’s her vulnerability outside of the operating room that really resonated with me. Dev wrote her perfectly.

While Trisha wears the role of Darcy in this retelling of Pride and Prejudice (and does so brilliantly), it’s Chef Darcy “DJ” Caine that takes on the poorer, looked down upon persona of Elizabeth Bennett. It’s in DJ that the book loses its ability to entertain and instead becomes a harsh lesson on what it means to be brown or black in today’s America and a severe scolding of the western world in general. While I expected this to a degree, after all it is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, DJ’s anger and resentment hovers on every page like a dark cloud, making it almost impossible for me, as a reader, to empathize with him. Instead I found myself wanting to skip the pages that he narrated. And, while I own that my response to DJ may reflect my own life experiences, I was more bothered that his anger and resentment stalled out the overall story, both his own journey and his relationship with Trisha. It’s not until the 65% mark that DJ starts to look internally at his own prejudices and, had I not been reviewing, I would have put down the book long before this. Which would have been a shame because once he recognized how he’d misjudged Trisha and started to see his life through different lenses, he became very likable and the book took off.

Overall, I enjoyed Sonali Dev's writing and her depiction of Indian-American culture. As the daughter of an immigrant, this is something that I can relate to so easily and I look forward to reading more of her work.

I have read many a retelling of the original Pride and Prejudice and this is one of my faves! I love how the woman is the proud one here as opposed to the man. It’s a nice turn of events. The only problem with the book is that I reallllly want Indian food now.

What a smart, well-written, thoughtful retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Swapping Darcy and Lizzie’s genders was brilliant, and this contains a lot of excellent commentary about social class and power dynamics. Thoroughly enjoyable.