A fantastic reimagining of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Ashna Raje is a chef with a struggling family restaurant, and enters a reality cooking competition to win the much-needed funds for her restaurant. The only catch - she's been paired up with Rico Silva, who is her (secret) high school love. Their chemistry is still off-the-charts, but there's a lot of history to unravel if the two are ever going to pull off the win. A fun, contemporary romance with great callbacks to the original, without ever losing focus on the story being told.

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
Just as good as Dev's Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors! I love the characters.

This is the 3rd book I've read from this author about an extended immigrant family and their loves and relationships. Each sibling is different and learns to love. I've really enjoyed the series.

Everything that you need to know about this book comes from its very apt title. The Persuasion is a direct homage to Jane Austen’s tale of a love lost and its impact over time, leading to protagonists meeting again. Recipe tells you that the book has something to do with cooking. And there you are, a delightful read and one that I enjoyed.

More specifically, chef Ashna runs a restaurant in which she honors her late father by cooking his specialties. The restaurant is failing though and Ashna lets herself become a chef/contestant on a cooking show, kind of like Dancing with the Stars, in which a professional cook is teamed with a celebrity. And what a celebrity…not really a spoiler, he is a past love of Ashna’s. Will sparks fly? Will they have a second chance?

In addition to these main characters, readers learn a good deal about Ashna’s immediate and extended families. All is not completely lightness in this romance title. For me, this added depth to the story.

I liked this novel which let me escape into an interesting world.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

I've loved some of Sonali Dev's previous books.

But Recipe for Persuasion was more like a Recipe for Disaster for me. It didn't work at all.

First, this title was marketed as a "romcom". It is neither funny (or light or fluffy or anything remotely similar) nor is it particularly romantic. In fact, I would not call it a romance, I don't care that the two technically end up together on the last page.

There was no real time spent on the couple, for one.

There was far too much time spent jumping around between side plots, side characters, and flashbacks. It wasn't smooth, it didn't make for an easy to follow or enjoyable read. So even if I wasn't disappointed by the whole "romcom" thing, the rest of the story was a flop anyway.

I really love Sonali Dev's books. I feel like I am a part of the family! Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen book, this version in a close second.

DNF

This series just is not what I want it to be. Based on what I read (a couple chapters) and what reviews report, this one's even more loose a "retelling" than the first book in the Rajes. If you tell me I'm getting a JA retelling, I WANT A JA RETELLING. Same goes for these being billed as cutesy romantic comedies when they're not. They're more dramatic family sagas with central romances. All that to say, I think these will be great for the right sort of reader, but be prepared that the stories are not particularly Jane Austen-y and are not light reads.

Ashna Raje fears losing her restaurant, her connection to her late father, his legacy. Ending up on a reality cooking show with her first love was not her solution, nor his preference, as he's moved away from that life to become soccer star Rico Silva. Old wounds open and heal in this second of the Raje series, a standalone novel in itself. If you like Jane Austen or not, Dev's take on her work is fresh and delicious, with moments that take your breath away, as when Rico saves Ashna's toes from being severed by her dropped chef''s knife, diving across the room and damaging further his career-ending injury. Dev makes romance novels more accessible to those of us who don't prefer them by making the stories credible and the characters delightfully flawed, yearning and yet drawing back, again and again until dear reader is just as frustrated. I didn't read romance until I won a set of novels by Sonali Dev. There's so much more going on than the steaminess and sexual tension, although there's plenty of that amongst the dynamics of family and friendship and careers. I highly recommend this book and basically anything by Sonali Dev. I was fortunate to receive a digital copy from the publisher William Morrow Paperbacks through NetGalley.

I really love Persuasion, which is what persuaded me (ha) to pick up this book. Actually, I started with Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors and then read this. While PPOF followed the text quite closely, this one did not.

I liked the structure of the story, that we went back and saw Ashna's mother's past from her POV. When we first met Ashna's mother, she just came off as abusive. The more we got to know her, the more she seemed inept. The further we delved into her back story, the more it seemed like the ineptitude was inevitable, given her circumstances. So by the time Ashna had forgiven her mother, I had too.

I loved Cooking with the Stars. I think it shows an astute understanding of pop culture and could see that show being made. Very creative and a good way to bring these two people together.

I was very taken by surprise by the marital rape backstory for Ashna's mother being depicted in such detail. I wish the publisher had included a content warning for that. There are some parts of her story that I would have liked to know was coming. Then again, I was reading an ARC, so there might be one in the published version. That said, I thought that storyline was handled deftly.

3.5*
Teenage sweethearts are reunited many years later by a reality television show. Ashne is a chef who doesn’t really like cooking but she is desperate to save her failing California restaurant. It was her father’s establishment but now it’s her responsibility and she agrees to go on a cooking show to help save the floundering business. What she doesn’t know is that she will be paired up with someone she knew in high school – Rico Silva, a soccer superstar. Annoyed at the prospect of cooking with a boy she once gave her heart to is annoying enough, but now her absentee mother has arrived on the scene with hopes of mending the rift between them. Ashne’s mother has always been an advocate for the rights of women and for the downtrodden but it consumed her, making her a long-distance parent who toiled away in India, having little contact with her child.

When the soccer star is first introduced, he makes a dramatic show of it and endears both him and Ashna to the television viewers. Rico is recuperating from surgery and comes across as charming and chivalrous. Ashna must now deal with two people re-entering her life which causes stress and chaos. Like Anne Elliott in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Ashna gave up the boy she loved years earlier. Now that he has returned, she will need to steel herself so she isn’t drawn in again. But Rico, the Brazilian star, has tremendous charisma and is so comfortable in front of the cameras. It’s a combination that makes his allure hard to resist.

Dev has once again taken a classic Austen novel and re-worked it for contemporary readers. Here there is a mix of East Indian, American and even South American flavors. The foods they create are drawn from their cultural backgrounds. But it’s certainly Rico who steals the show and the book. He’s so likeable and oozes appeal. Ashna is harder to fall in love with but as she thaws, she shows her true self. And Ashna’s mother’s story takes a separate plotline that adds depth to the family dynamics. It brings the Indian heritage to more prominence, enriching the book and adding intensity.

I wanted to love this one because I adore Austen adaptations, but often when
I'm reading a book with a main character who has bad anxiety, it triggers my own. I don't like to read with a tight chest and empathy-anxiety, so I had to abandon ship. Several friends have loved this book, though!

In Recipe for Persuasion, Ashna, struggling to keep her restaurant afloat, agrees to do her producer friend a favor by appearing on a chefs/celebrity cooking show. However, she was not expecting to be paired with retired soccer star Rico Silva, who just so happens to be her secret long lost first love. The blurb for this book makes it sound light and funny - it is not. (If you read and liked Dev's Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors I think you will like this one. But it is high on angst. This is a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion, but I haven't read Persuasion, so I can't speak to the faithfulness (or not!) of the story. ) Anyway, Ashna is severely traumatized by abusive relationships in her family, and she has to do a lot of work to start to get past it. This book is a second chance romance, but her relationship with Rico is almost an afterthought at times - Ashna and her mother, Shobi, are the primary relationship in this book. Shobi even gets her own POV chapters, and flashbacks to her past. As always, Dev writes compelling characters, and I read this book really quickly, super interested in what would happen. But I wanted more from Ashna and Rico's relationship - because they previously knew each other a lot of the "getting to know you" isn't necessary, and they're just immediately back in love. (Though tortured about it because they can't communicate effectively.) But they have lived entire adult lives without each other - there should have been more of a process to get re-acquainted. We hear about their cooking challenges and their time on set, but we don't see as much of it as I would have liked. I also loved Rico's character and just wanted to see more of him. But because Ashna has so many issues the book focuses on them. I liked her as a character, but while Rico sees Ashna as this kind person who is friendly to everyone, I didn't quite get that - every time we're in her head she's just panicking and not interacting with anyone. This book is so dark and both Ashna and Shobi have been through so much - when it was a bit lighter and funnier towards the end I realized wait - I want that! I want that book. But if you are looking for a well written, angsty read that is more about reconciling with family than it is a romance, I'd recommend this one.

I LOVED Pride Prejudice and Other Flavors. When I found out that the second book was going to tackle my favorite Austen novel, I could not get my hands on it fast enough! This did not disappoint. Dev is the master of sweet romances, with longing glances, and angst-filled backstories, and Austen's Persuasion already had plenty, but Dev breathed new life into it. If you need to laugh and cry go read it right now!

This book was fantastic and a great follow up to the first in the series, Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors. I loved the main characters and their nuanced, deep feelings and long history. The reality cooking show was lots of fun and a great backdrop to the more serious subject matter in the other plots. Highly recommended!

I am loving Sonali Dev's Jane Austen retellings! This one, of course, is a retelling of Persuasion.
We are back with the Raje family and this book tells Ashna's story. Ashna has a LOT on her plate. Her mom abandoned her (mostly) when she was young, and she grew up with her alcoholic father and her aunt and uncle's family.
Her father committed suicide a couple of years ago, and now Ashna is trying to save his floundering restaurant. Her plan to do this is to go on a Food Network show and win the prize money. The problems: she hates being in front of a camera, she can't cook anything except her father's recipes (long story there), and her boyfriend from high school (who dumped her) is her celebrity partner. What can go wrong?!
This is a fun story. Lots of drama, great food, and healing goes on in this book! Well worth your time to read.

I have to be honest, this was a DNF for me. The writing style just didn't suit my reading preferences, even though I wish it had,

SOOOO much better than the first one. I found Trisha to be a whiny and annoying protagonist. Whereas the childhood friends romance was far better executed. Ashna was a more relatable character and while the misunderstanding between the leads was frustrating I enjoyed this book more.

I really liked this book! It took an old story and made it more fun. I am recommending this one for my book club. Thank you so much!!

I enjoyed the parts of the book that took place during the cooking competition and the relationship between Rico and Asha. I really wish this book had focused more there instead on the soap opera lives of the various family members. The family dramas seemed to overshadow the relationship and didn't lend much to the story and I felt the flashbacks were oddly placed and sometimes confusing.

Recipe for Persuasion is billed as a desi retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, I’ll have to take the publisher and author’s word on that because I haven’t read the original and I wasn’t impressed with the retelling. Billed as a rom-com, there was nothing funny about this story and it wasn’t particularly romantic. The hero and heroine had a forbidden teenage romance in high school for about 1 year; she is Indian, his is Brazilian and they both remember their parting in very different and vivid ways and apparently over a decade later they still have strong feelings of hate for one another which has affected their romantic lives up until now (hello, can we say therapy needed).

Ashna’s early life was lived in India until her father was a prince but banished to California for various reasons where he became a famed chef of a high touted and popular restaurant. Her mother was absent, preferring to devote her life to a foundation that supported equal rights for girl’s education and right to play sports. Ashna’s memories are of her parents fighting with her mother visited and a father who struggled with alcoholism and depression which she believed stemmed from her mother’s refusal to live full time with them. While her parent’s relationship played a huge part in shaping Ashna into the woman she is today, it bogged down this book and failed to allow the romance between Ashna and Rico to bloom.

Rico’s parents were killed when he was young and he gave up football (soccer) because it’s what his father did for a living, but after moving to California to live with an aunt, meeting Ashna, getting his heart broken he went to England and picked it up again becoming a star player until an injury forced his retirement at age 30. I gleamed from the story that Rico had abandonment issues, he was high intelligent and knew how to work the media, and he harbored a grudge against Ashna and her father that made him sign up for a reality cooking show so he could be partnered with her and make her miserable.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the heat between Ashan and Rico, if anything it felt more like a sibling type relationship than a romantic one. I enjoyed watching them discover each other as adults and seeing how their teenage relationship came about but so much of this story was weighed down by Asha’s strained relationship with her mother and the relationship between her mother and late father.

For me this book was just a big fail all the way around, I found it to be bloated with too much information in some ways yet lacking in others. The romance floundered and I found it difficult to like a single character in the story.