In her second homage to Jane Austen, Ms. Dev tackles a story of loss and redemption in a tale of a first love as well as two women: a mother and daughter who lost their emotional connection years before. Ashna Raje has continued for ten years to run her floundering restaurant, Curried Dreams, clinging to all the old recipes and décor that her late father devised. She dares not stray from his menu least panic attacks hit from a type of PTSD related to a hugely traumatic event in Ashna’s past with two devastating losses. As part of the wealthy and influential Raje family, Asha has a lot of support and people who love her; however, Ashna always felt rejected and abandoned by her mother, Shobi, whose raison d’etre is as a crusader for womens’ rights in India. She has the feeling of being on the outside looking into to the successful Rajes though they have always treated her as one of their own.

One of Ashna’s formative losses was her first love, Rico Silva. In a reflection of her mother’s own story, Ashna was forbidden to be with a boy of lesser social standing by her domineering father. Rico Silva, feeling rejected by Ashna, left and went on to become a soccer super star in England, but he never forgot his dark-eyed beauty, or the desolate feeling of a true soul-mate lost. When Rico sees a chance to partner with Ashna in a Food Network show, he feels it’s a chance to move on and close the door on a painful episode from his past. Rico’s own family history was peppered tragedy as well so in some ways he is equally as wounded as Ashna. Recovering from an injury and retiring from his illustrious career, Rico makes a big splash on the show by saving Ashna from serious harm which, caught on camera, goes viral.

In some ways being on this show is Ashna’s worst nightmare despite the fact that DJ from the first book is the show’s host and extended family are associated with the program. After so many years caught in emotional straight jacket, the last thing Ashna wants to do is have a major meltdown on national television. She only agrees to do the show as a rebuff to her mother and to save the failing albatross of her family restaurant.

Shobi was the victim of a forced marriage with Ashna’s father that shaped her life. Told in tandem, Ashna and Shobi’s stories reflect what extended emotional trauma can do to a family and their relationships for years. Now, Shobi who is at times hard to take, wants to repair the damage, some of which she is responsible for; however, it may be too little, too late. As Shobi’s part of the story unfolds, the reasons for her actions become more evident.

This story is quite the emotional roller coaster ride which is the mark of a finely told tale because in the end, the thrills, chills, and spills are all worth it. Readers will relate to the family dynamics while rooting for Ashna to overcome her debilities hoping she and Rico find their way back to the home they have in each other. Sonali Dev has woven an intense tale of love, loss, and reconciliation that will please fans of the first book and leave them anticipating the next in the Raje’s series, the enigmatic Yash’s story.

Dev writes a fabulous retelling of Jane Austen's "Persuasion". This is one of those lazy weekend reads- take it to the beach or outside. Just make sure that you've got some yummy snacks- since her food writing is fabulous and will make you want to eat all the things.

It's a sweet women's fiction novel, with clear callbacks to Jane Austen's Persuasion. However, the three different perspectives came out of nowhere, especially Ashna's mom's. The two characters of Ashna and Rico you expect to be the different perspectives but not her mom, Shobi. It does help add to the story to make it way more than just a romance between a man and a woman, but also a relationship between mother and daughter. Shobi's storyline is very, very different from Ashna and Rico's the one who got away trope. The different point of views are drastic flipping between one another, and without any chapter headers to help guide readers, and different timelines all over the place, it's confusing when reading. The story is a complete slow burn, by more than halfway, you're still wondering where is the *big* moment or something. I feel like I'm just waiting and waiting for the big climax and something to happen. But the book is well written and intriguing and certainly drew me in, but maybe that's because I just wanted more. The time jumps are unclear and abrupt, there needs to be a header or a different font or italics to signify a flashback from the present day. As is, without something, there's an element of confusion. All in all, the story does put a diverse spin on a Jane Austen classic which is great to see in today's world.

I like the characters in the Raje world and find their unconditional love for each other so sweet. This is not the funny rom-com read I was expecting, it was more of a family drama and a love story just happened to be in the book. Main character Ashna has some heavy issues she needs to work through because she is so unaware of her misery. The romance between Ashna and Rico was fine. There is a good bit of self-wallowing from many of the characters, it is annoying.

I enjoy Sonali Dev's writing, so this bumped the book to three stars for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy.

Sonia Dev writes in the most amazing byway.Drawn in from the first pages loved her first book loved this one.A very special novel by a gifted author.Highly recommend.#netgalley#harpercollins

Recipe for Persuasion is Sonali Dev’s latest Jane Austen inspired novel. A sweet second chance at love tale, this delicious romance will have you savoring every second you spend reading it.

This is book two of The Raje Series but you don’t need to read book one - Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors - to enjoy this one.

We’ve all had them. Those days when life seems determined to poison the lemonade we’ve made out of the lemons it has handed us.  Ashna Raje feels those are the only kinds of days she’s been having lately. Keeping her beloved father’s failing restaurant open has been almost impossible. Endless foreclosure notices from her bank are the only mail she receives and the fact that she has panic attacks if she cooks anything but her Baba’s recipes means she can’t even update the menu to lure more customers in. She stays after hours to mop floors and scrub toilets because she had to let the cleaning service go. But all of that is nothing compared to her sous chef and close friend quitting without notice.

That’s the night her cousin Trisha and best friend China show up just as she’s wiping down the kitchen. She’s not really surprised. Everyone knows Ashna works long hours and that makes her a favorite late night snack source. This time, though, she’s not being asked to provide refreshments. China’s been working on a reality show for Food Network called Cooking with the Stars, a program which teams chefs with celebrities for a culinary competition and she’s hit a big snag. One of the cooks had to quit and they need a last minute replacement. Ashna is a chef, she’s local, and most importantly, beautiful and desperate. A spot on the show will give her enough money to keep the foreclosure at bay. The only trouble? Ashna’s cooking induced panic attacks. She gives China a (mostly) firm no.

Then Ashna’s mother Shobi calls. She’s receiving a Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards in India. She wants Ashna to do the introduction at the awards dinner and like all their conversations, this one quickly degenerates into a fight. Shobi had pursued her career at Ashna’s expense, spending more time promoting her girls in sports programs than she ever spent with her own daughter. Ashna has no desire to repay her mother’s desertion with a speech rhapsodizing about her accomplishments. Stung by Shobi’s insistence that she has nothing more pressing to do, she impulsively tells her she’s taken a position on Cooking with the Stars.

FIFA winning soccer star Rico Silva has never forgotten - or forgiven - the girl who broke his heart when he was a young, lonely, vulnerable teenager. Now that he’s been forced to retire due to an injury, he decides it’s finally time to lay this ghost to rest. He begins by googling Ashna and that’s when he discovers the Entertainment Weekly article about Cooking with the Stars. One phone call to his agent and he’s on the show, paired with the girl who kicked him while he was down. His plan is to rub in her face that the boy her father said wasn’t worthy of her is now wildly successful, fabulously rich, and disgustingly famous.

Ashna is completely blindsided when she sees Rico again. Their meeting results in her losing her grip on the knife she’s using to chop vegetables and Rico being rushed to the emergency room, and the clip of a seemingly star-smitten Ashna practically swooning at the sight of him as he heroically saves her from self-injury goes viral. They become social media darlings, rocketing the anticipation for the show to heights a Food Network program has never received.  It’s made clear to Ashna that there is no chance she will be released from her contract so she can get out of the disastrous situation.  Deciding to make the best of it, she convinces Rico they need to use their explosive chemistry to charm the pants off the judges. But the judges aren’t the ones whom they are really interested in seeing naked.

Recipe for Persuasion is a fast, fun contemporary romance with two fabulous leads. It would have been easy for the anxiety ridden Ashna to come across as helpless and weak but the author does a fantastic job of giving her a backstory that keeps that from happening. We see a nice balance between the sensitive girl tied down by a painful past and familial expectations, and the loving, fascinating, competent young woman who shines when she’s away from those debilitating ties.

Rico’s plan to confront Ashna in front of the cameras could easily have had him coming across as a complete ass, but he is humble, kind, thoughtful, helpful and caring throughout the tale - especially to the person against whom he supposedly is seeking revenge. From the moment he saves her from the wayward knife to the way he smoothly covers her faux pas in front of the camera, he becomes the champion Ashna deserves.

Their path to an HEA is filled with humor, sexual tension, tender moments and witty banter. The scenes where they are on the  show are especially enjoyable, portraying  them at their very best.

Most of the attention is focused on Ashna and Rico but there is a secondary romance toward the end of the book and the entire story is filled with an amazing cast of supporting characters. I especially enjoyed the super sweet Song, a K-drama actress also appearing in the competition and Ashna’s Aunt Mina, who was the maternal figure her biological mom had never been.

This author loves angst and Ashna’s and Rico’s histories provide plenty of deep, emotional  elements that create a much richer read than the cover leads one to expect. It would be easy to get lost in all the drama but Ms. Dev does a nice job of combining the turmoil with lighter ingredients to give us a story that is sweet as well as savory.

Most books have flaws, though, and this one has a few which kept it from reaching DIK status. While I appreciated the gravitas and sensitivity Ashna’s parental issues give her character, they are so complicated  and traumatic their resolution takes up a great deal of page space. As a result, the book reads more like women’s fiction than romance. Additionally, while the storyline with Shobi allows the author to address the draconic patriarchal system of India’s past it makes Shobi less a character and more a mouthpiece, someone who was on the page simply to sermonize. Combined with the political conversations centered around Ashna’s cousin running for governor, this causes the text to have moments where it teeters on being preachy, especially since the style used is very much telling over showing.

Those quibbles aside, eloquent prose and excellent character building make Recipe for Persuasion a clever, charming story about two people who rediscover their authentic selves by finding love. I think the author’s legions of fans will adore this book, as will anyone who enjoys a goof.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
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Thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC copy of this book available to me.

I wanted to like this more than I did, but it just didn't click for me. A bit too much angst from Ashna, the female protagonist. I did enjoy Rico's character, and how he was shown to be so much more than just an athlete. And the cooking scenes and descriptions of the food were just, well, yummy. In the end, quite readable and I will be looking up more books by this author.

This follow-up to Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors stands on its own. In this loose retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Ashna is a Bay Area chef so desperate to save her family’s failing restaurant she agrees to compete on the reality tv show Cooking with the Stars. That’s where she reconnects with her first love—now a Brazilian soccer star—on live tv, for the first time since he disappeared twelve years ago on the worst night of her life. Dev puts her own spin on Austen’s classic, while highlighting the timeless themes of the original: a young woman sensitive to her family’s criticism, a disadvantaged young man with no credentials but a bright future, an unexpected second chance at first love. A sensitive, satisfying update.

I picked up the first in this series - PRIDE PREJUDICE AND OTHER FLAVORS last fall after a friends glowing review. I love “Austen reimagined” stories. So I was eager to get my hands on Dev’s upcoming release. While I’ve read Persuasion, I am by no means an expert on its inner workings. That background (or lack thereof) aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

This second chance love story is deeply layered and perhaps a bit heavier than I expected. There are elements of sweet rom-com levity- a chef/celebrity cooking show, a romance with a coming of age backstory and a current day push&pull. I loved getting a more nuanced look at the family I got to know in the PP&OF. But there are weightier issues to address like suicide, neglect, cultural expectations and abuse. I appreciated how Dev blended the light & dark into a wholly satisfying story.

Ashna and Rico secretly dated in high school. Once her father finds out, everything goes south and they end up heartbroken and going their separate ways. Rico becomes a soccer superstar and Ashna ends up taking over her father’s restaurant. When Rico has a career ending injury, he reads Ashna is going to be on a Food Network show where celebrities are paired with professional chefs. He asks his agent to get him on the show and ensure he is paired up with Ashna. Ashna is only on the show to save her father’s restaurant, so when Rico shows up as her partner, she realizes her involvement is going to be much more than she bargained for.

This book...is so good! In my opinion, Sonali Dev is one of the most talented authors currently writing in romance. This book is so packed with emotion from Ashna, Rico, and her mother Shobi. The level of emotional trauma that Ashna was exposed to as a child is heartbreaking. I was so angry on her behalf at her family for not recognizing the dysfunctional relationship she had with her father sooner. She needed to be protected, but they had no idea because of how well she internalized her emotions. Rico and Ashna have an epic connection. Rico is the only person Ashna can be herself with, because she is masking all of her emotions with her family. This is just skimming the surface of this book. There is so much to talk about in regards to Ashna’s mom and dad...if you read it and want to discuss, I am available! I loved this book and I think this book has the potential to be a romance classic!

I enjoyed this take on a Food Network cooking show but was also a bit frustrated with how much cat and mouse went on between the protagonists. Ashna was an emotional mess and needed therapy, Rico seemed the most normal of all the characters. Ashna's mother was tenacious and I think we were to admire her, although if she were my mother I (like Ashna) would have found her overbearing. Not being Indian, I found some of the references to Indian culture going over my head. I did like this book just not as much as Dev's Bollywood Bride.

Chef Ashna Raje is desperately trying to save her late father's restaurant and prove to her family she really can do it all. When she's asked to join the cast of a celebrity cooking show, she sees it as her chance to prove herself and save her restaurant. She just wasn't expecting to be paired with the one person she never wanted to see again, her first love and the man who left when she needed him the most, Rico Silva.

Rico is a soccer playing god who has the world at his disposal but has only ever had eyes for Ashna. When their reunion sparks instant chemistry and social media fame, they have to decide how to face it, on both sides of the camera. The more time they spend together the closer they come to facing their pasts and finding out the truth of what really tore them apart.

Recipe for Persuasion is the second in a series of Jane Austen retellings by Sonali Dev. Though I haven't read the first book in this series (based on Pride and Prejudice), this story was perfect as a standalone. The relationship between Ashna and Rico was fraught with all the complications of a past romance and secrets left unsaid. Ashna's relationship with her mother was a huge part of the story and their stories added new layers and depth to aspects of this retelling. Though the added story line of Ashna's mother was confusing at first, once I understood what was going on it brought understanding and context to the main story.

I found the banter to be witty and emotional and the relationships to be realistic. I highly recommend this to anyone who's a fan of the original Persuasion or anyone looking for a good second chance romance with a mix of family drama.

I went into this book thinking it would be a sweet, light romance, however this is deeper and really tackles some tough issues such as rape, grief, and trauma. This is a retelling of Persuasion, but I love that it doesn´t follow the original exactly as others such as Anna K did. It tells of Ashna, an Indian-American, who is struggling to keep up the family restaurant until she gets the opportunity to be on a cooking show. On this show she is paired with an old boyfriend from high school, Rico. The cultural parts of this were really fun, but this book is not light. It is a feminist, modern take on a classic story.

This second entry in Sonali Dev's series rewriting Jane Austen's novels is by far the best to date...perhaps that's because I don't know the storyline of Persuasion enough to critically pick through Dev's novel as I could the first. Regardless, her characters pop off the page with chemistry, and she doesn't shy away from complicated family relationships and how the past can ruin the future. Highly recommend!

Cute, fun, smart, heartbreaking and joyful. This book is one of the best Jane Austen retellings I have ever read! 

Dev paints a vivid picture of life and love within these pages making it impossible to put down. Her characters are deep, interesting, multifaceted and real. I loved following Ashna and Rico, watching their story develop and unfold with each turn of a page. 

I really love that Dev reimagined Jane Austen's Persuasion as a celebrity Food Network competition. It's wholly original, allowing Dev to make the story her own while staying true to its source material. 

I also really enjoyed the format of the book. Throughout it you switch from three different character perspectives: Ashna, Rico and Shoban (Ashna's mother). Watching the story develop through each of their perspectives, and learning their history with each other, was very interesting and having the different perspectives really added a lot to the story in my opinion.

I loved reading about the Raje family, their friends and learning about their complicated history with one another. 

A must read for Austen lovers and foodies!

**ARC from NetGalley**

Cute book. I like how the relationship developed. Characters were flawed just right and believable. There was growth and more than one character arc which was nice. I also enjoyed changing POV for the different chapters that way you could understand everyone better.

Thank you net galley for the advance reader copy of this novel. This was a contemporary romance dealing with a celebrity cooking show that was loosely based on jane Austen 's persuasion. It was an okay read for me more because of the persuasion theme than the authors writing style. I didn't fall in love with the characters either but I think that was more my tastes. Overall a good read and i would be willing to read something else by this author.

I love sonali dev’s books and she does it again with this one - absolutely knocked it out of the part with the Austen wink (Persuasion) and kept modern romance alive and diverse! Thumbs up!

Recipe for Persuasion is a recipe for perfection. This book is so much more than a rom-com. It's warm and witty, with wonderfully drawn characters, and strong social messages. Ashna Raje, a chef, agrees to participate on a celebrity reality show. What she doesn't know is Rico Silva, her high school boyfriend and world-famous soccer star, has manipulated himself onto the show as her partner. Will they get back together or can they realize their relationship is over forever? This book touches on complicated family relationships. Sonali Dev does not shy away from social issues facing us today and the book works beautifully. This will be a great book club read. I can''t wait for #3 in the Raje family series.

Okay, so this is a variation on Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's been awhile since I had read it, so a little refresher on the plot was needed. It's not a cut and paste re-imagining per se' but the idea was there.

While I could appreciate the fresh take on the classic, the diverse characters added a little more flair to the story, I just couldn't get into it. This was a heavy read for me. A lot of drama and heartache, not enough lightheartedness to balance it. The main characters just didn't have the cohesiveness nor the endearing qualities I was hoping for. Rico and Ashna's relationship was toxic in my opinion. I didn't believe in their romance to put it lightly.

While POV's changed, the only character that actually had depth was Ashna's mother. Her history was truly sad and more interesting. Everyone else just annoyed me.

I liked the cooking competition, and was glad for an HEA, but that's it. The story seemed to drag on a lot.