Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors - Sonali Dev

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰

Audiobook narration: ✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.

Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco's most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that's not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who's achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules: never trust an outsider; never do anything to jeopardize your brother's political aspirations; and never, ever, defy your family. Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules. But now she has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn't repeat old mistakes.

Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha's arrogance. And then he discovers that she's the only surgeon who can save his sister's life. As the two class, their assumptions crumble like the spun sugar on one of DJ's stunning desserts. But before a future can be savored there's a past to be reckoned with...

A family trying to build home in a new land.

A man who has never felt at home anywhere.

And a choice to be made between the two."

Now that I've finished this book, the description seems wildly inaccurate to me. Trisha doesn't strike me as in any way the black sheep of the family. The book does open with a pretty early reference to her estrangement from her family; however, it is pretty quickly revealed that it's a mutual decision, and even early on we have indications that her lack of involvement with her family is more her choice (at least in the case of her siblings and mother) than theirs. Whatever the case, though, Trisha has just begun to make contact with her family again at the start of the book when she meets DJ while invading his catering kitchen during an event and immediately makes a horrible first impression. Things progress in true Pride and Prejudice fashion from there, with both Trisha and DJ firmly convinced that the other person is terrible. For what it's worth, I stood firmly on DJ's side...but that may have been because all the descriptions of his food made me want to eat it all.

I know I joked about things progressing just like Pride and Prejudice, but in actuality it didn't seem to be very closely based off of the classic story, and I can't decide if I liked that it was a looser interpretation or not. Frankly, if I hadn't known going into it that it was supposed to be a "retelling" I wouldn't have guessed that it was, and part of me feels like if they hadn't started with that premise, this would have been a better book. Specifically, the way Wickham was shoehorned in felt a little too melodramatic to me - she read like a soap opera villain, and that storyline was hard to take seriously, not to mention horribly problematic and cringeworthy. Beyond that, Trisha and her dad are also fairly terrible, and most of the characters are one-note and underdeveloped. It seemed like the author was trapped between wanting to retell a classic and wanting to write a completely original story, and the middle ground ended up...dissatisfying. 

As far as the plot, not only was it lackluster, it was full to bursting with ableism. Remember that bit in the cover summary about how Trisha is the only surgeon who can save DJ's sister's life? Well, the surgery that can do that will cause Emma to lose her sight, so Emma staunchly refuses to have the surgery done because...that's right...she would rather literally die than be blind. I did not love that, and I loved it even less when a. after initially being told the surgery would damage her optic nerves she wasn't given any kind of social worker support or connected with anyone to talk through her options and b. nothing developed from there. We find out that Emma doesn't want the surgery, and then we spend like three-quarters of the book going back and forth between Trisha at the hospital thinking about being around food and arguing with DJ, Trisha being with DJ arguing, or DJ being by himself cooking, thinking about what a bitch Trisha is, and worrying about how he'll pay for Emma's (unwanted) medical procedure. Then all of a sudden at the very end of the book they're like HOLD UP, wait, we love each other! I mean I know that happens in the original Pride and Prejudice, but this felt MUCH more abrupt and, frankly, pretty forced and unexplainable, because Trisha is unbearable. 

Clunky and ableist overall plot aside, there were also a couple super weird plot points included that I could not make heads or tails of. There are multiple dramatic references to how Trisha was "burned" as a child, for instance, which is basically how they excuse her being an unmitigated douche when she first meets DJ, because the extreme trauma of the experience led to her having horrible anxiety in kitchens. But then the burning story is ultimately revealed to have been like a few tiny drops of hot oil landing on her while learning how to cook something. I'm sorry but...what? Maybe it's because I was expecting a Bend It Like Beckham-esque something caught on fire and I had to get a skin graft story, or maybe it's because I have a sick burn scar wrapping halfway around my wrist from spilling bacon grease on my arm, but with the level of emphasis given to the "burning," a couple splatters of oil did not sell it for me. There was also a long, ongoing scene at the end of the book where Trisha lost a contact but refused to be seen in her "spectacles" that I could not stop rolling my eyes at. Christ on a cracker, Trisha, just put your fucking glasses on.

And finally, we have arrived at the audiobook narration, which was not my favorite. I could have lived with it at first, but then we got to DJ. Some context - Trisha grew up in California and speaks in a fairly nondescript American accent. DJ and Emma are from England and speak with British accents. And here's where the accents make things weird: the narrator speaks in a British accent for spoken dialogue coming from DJ or Emma, but does not use the accent for internal dialogue coming from DJ. And maybe this is something I should be able to move past, but it's super weird hearing an American accent say things like "he felt like a right arse" or "you are fecking unbelievable." It definitely took me out of it, and I have to give first prize to Trisha's feet "finding purchase on his arse" at the end of the book, because I could not stop laughing when I heard that. The narrator is obviously capable of pulling off a British accent, so why not just use it anytime you're reading from DJ's perspective? Or better yet, get a British person to read his character? Bleh.

Ultimately, I wouldn't say this was a bad book, necessarily, but as you can tell from my rating breakdown at the top, the biggest thing it has going for it is the initial draw. You could read the first quarter and then skip to the end, I guess. Or you could look into one of the books below instead.

Alternate Pride and Prejudice retellings to check out:

• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalalluddin
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi
• Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Other books featuring Indian American main characters to try:

• Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
• Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
• Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani
• When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

B&B - Three Dark Crowns with a side of biscotti

My book club has been reading the Three Dark Crowns series by Kendare Blake since December. In this series, the island of Fennbirn is ruled by one queen, chosen from a set of triplets born to the previous queen. Typically, each triplet is born with special abilities - one is a poisoner, able to consume poisons without ill effects and wield them against others with expertise; another is a naturalist, gifted with a familiar and able to grow plants and influence animals; and the third is an elemental, able to control wind, water, fire, etc. Their sixteenth birthday begins what is known as the Ascension, a year in which each sister fights for the throne...to the death. Last triplet standing gets the crown.

If you're thinking, "wow, this sounds dark and intense!" Well...you're not wrong. It's also gripping and keeps you on the edge of your seat. And while Pietyr, the unofficial consort to poisoner Queen Katharine, is partial to hemlock biscuits, I can't snack on poison while I read, so for this first Books & Bites post, I decided to go for some chocolate almond biscotti instead.

I modified the chocolate biscotti recipe from Kristine's Kitchen, omitting the chocolate chips and nuts and subbing two teaspoons of almond extract for the one teaspoon of vanilla. They're no hemlock biscuit, but for a non-poisoner like me, I find a couple pieces of these biscotti and a mug of hot chocolate to be the perfect accompaniment to the final book of this series. 

Tweet Cute - Emma Lord

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Meet Pepper: swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming - mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger's massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack: class clown and constant thorn in Pepper's side. When he isn't trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin's shadow, he's busy working in his family's deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future may be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma's iconic grilled cheese recipe, he'll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

All's fair in love and cheese - that is, until Pepper and Jack's spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they're publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they're also falling for each other in real life - on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate - people on the internet are shipping them?! - their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can't ignore that they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected."

Real talk, the description could be more accurate. It makes it sound like Pepper and Jack are in a heated battle and at each other's throats IRL. What actually happens is even better. Jack and Pepper start working together on swim/dive team stuff with no idea that they have been Twitter-warring with each other, but they realize pretty quickly that this is what's happening, and when Jack points out how good their Twitter battle has been for business at Girl Cheesing, they team up to keep it going in order to help Girl Cheesing stay in business.

The two clearly have a thing for each other, but both are torn about their feelings, since they also have a bit of a thing for the classmate they have been chatting with on Weazel, the anonymous chat app Jack built. Pepper doesn't know that Wolf, the guy she's been talking with all year, is Jack, and Jack tinkered with the app so that it wouldn't reveal to him Bluebird's identity. Jack and Pepper may have caught feelings for each other, but that's a little confusing when they each feel equally connected to someone online they think is a completely different person. Ah, to be a teenager again. I wouldn't go back, but I do love reading about being one and remembering what it was like.

Ultimately, the very very end of this was a little underwhelming for me (I'm talking like last-chapter stuff here), but every bit of the rest of it was perfection. I love Pepper, her snark and her drive, and I want to squeeze Jack and tell him to stop comparing himself to his twin, because he is wonderful. I also want to hang out with Grandma Belly basically any chance I can get. Real talk, I have a humongous stack of books waiting to be read during my social distancing, but it's incredibly tempting to ignore those in favor of rereading this immediately. It's a lovely, heart-warming read.

Anti-Diet - Christy Harrison

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"If you're like most people, you've dieted at some point in your life. You've had negative thoughts about your body, carefully counted your calories, and obsessed over the ever-changing rules of "healthy eating." But studies have shown that well over 90 percent of people who manage to lose weight regain it within five years. If dieting is so ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?

The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness with health and even moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means to attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It's sexist, racist, and classist, yet this approach to thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to identify. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming.

In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian nutritionist, takes on diet culture and the multibillion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, well-being, and happiness. It will turn what you believe about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it has infiltrated the world of health and wellness, all the sneaky forms it can take, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health - no matter their size. Based on scientific research, Harrison's personal experience, and stories from her patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture and will help you reclaim your body, mind, and life so you can focus on things that truly matter."

This book is life-changing. I couldn't stop underlining and taking notes as I read it, and I want to give a copy to everyone I know. As someone who has struggled since high school with disordered eating, yo-yo and bandwagon dieting, weight fluctuations, etc, every word Christy wrote resonated with me. When I reflect back on times I have lost weight, it has always been as a result of extreme dieting, it has never been sustainable, and sitting here reflecting on it, was it worth the effort and the misery of constantly being hungry, crabby, and tired? FUCK NO. Especially when I take into account that regardless of how high or low my weight was, my actual scientific measurements of health like cholesterol levels and blood pressure have been excellent and, more importantly, have never changed. If being fat or gaining weight is unhealthy, then at 30-40 pounds heavier than I was ten years ago shouldn't other indicators of health be getting worse?

Things that make you go "hmmm..."

I am so grateful that a friend of mine read this book and recommended it to me. In the last few months, I have been focusing my energy on mental health and self care, and part of that focus included tackling my body dysmorphia. What better way to untangle my issues with weight and body image that than by reading a book debunking the message fed to all of us that the only way to be healthy is to be thin and highlighting all the ways that diet culture messes with our lives while offering no real benefits? There were moments as I read that I literally wanted to yell or cheer out loud, it was so inspiring, and there were just as many moments where I was in tears because what I was reading resonated so deeply with my experience. Also, we need to talk more about how racist, classist, and misogynist diet culture is, because I had no idea, and reading about the ways in which diet culture and fatphobia try to force everyone into essentially a rich white standard of beauty, I just...if you don't walk away from this book furious at diet culture and legitimately ready to burn it to the ground, good god, what is going on with you?

One of my favorite inspiring moments is when Christy notes in chapter one that "it's hard to smash the patriarchy on an empty stomach." I mean.............yeah! It is, you guys. Can we please eat some fucking carbs and get smashing? And just think, that was chapter one. There are eleven chapters, folx, all just as empowering. Whether you have struggled with diet culture or not, read, be inspired, and share the message. Let's burn diet culture to the ground together!