Recipe For Persuasion: A Novel

"Struggling chef Ashna Raje and former soccer star Rico Silva are torn apart at a young age, only to be reunited later in life in an unideal-but-fun rom-com situation. The book chronicles the backstory of Ashna’s estranged relationship with her mother, who married into a wealthy Indian family, upending her life and, in turn, her daughter’s. I love Sonali Dev’s flair for character descriptions and her descriptions of South Asian culture – without the explanatory comma. In the vein of Jasmine Guillory and Helen Hoang, Dev weaves her characters’ lives together in each of her books, bringing background characters into the foreground in subsequent stories. The family dynamics are stronger and more realized as you, the reader, come across a favorite character in another book. This book provided some much-needed escapism for me this summer."