Recipe for Persuasion audiobook

This is not a romcom! Calling Recipe for Persuasion fun and breezy is highly misleading. This book deals with a lot of serious issues that should have come with a big fat warning. Also, I'd have liked this a whole lot better if Sonali Dev hadn't called it a retelling.Basically after a shitty childhood with an alcoholic father and absentee mother, Ashna Raje has abandonment issues, depression and severe anxiety. As if that wasn't enough, she's on the verge of running her restaurant to the ground, unless she takes up her bestfriend's offer to take part in a celebrity cooking reality show. But there's a catch. She'll have to partner with her ex-boyfriend from high school, who even after 12 years is pissed that she dumped him (which is kinda stupid because she's under the impression that he jilted her).Anyway, there are residual feelings, sparks, tangled web of misunderstandings, ego clashes, a sad attempt at love triangle meant to confuse the readers and online fans dead set on seeing this couple together after a rather disastrous reunion goes viral. They even come up with a cute otp #Ashico! After 200 pages of family drama and heart to hearts, Ashna hears the guy's side of things and all is well in paradise. Now, moving on to what I really wanted to talk about, was the story of Ashna's mother, Shobi. Seeing everything from Ashna's perspective, initially we get the feeling that her mother is a cold, career oriented opportunitist who doesn't care about her only child. And I did find it childish that Ashna chooses to believe her diabolical, dead beat dad over her mum every time and that even after his death she clings to the notion of what he wanted her to be. Try as she might, pleasing her dead father doesn't bring her nothing but a big bunch of bills from her therapist, a crippling anxiety if she so much as attempts to do something on her own and increasing levels of unhappiness over the years. Once Shobi reveals her story of being forced into the marriage by her dad and the guy she considered her friend, the horror of her wedding night, forced to see her child being taken away and so much more, everything is crytal clear for Ashna. So much that all her issues are magically sorted. First stop is her boyfriend's hotel room, and then she's on her way to happily ever after. Um, sorry? Anxiety doesn't work like that. I understand that she feels like she's got a parent back, but did it actually take the story of her mom's rape to convince herself that her dad was a douche? He blackmails her into staying with him when she was just ten! He literally waves a gun in her face and tells her that he'll off himself if she thinks about going back to her mom. And this is just one of the many times he's been a shitty dad. This guy would probably win the "Vilest Parent Ever" title on his good day. I'm even made mad at Ashna's kaki for not being honest with her about the true state of her parents' marriage, seeing she had the front row seat to all of Shobi's misfortunes. I can't put it in words how much I admired Shobi for changing her life around after being dealt with such shitty cards. Not to say I'm unsympathetic toward Ashna, but sometimes I couldn't help but feel that she purposefully wanted to be alone and miserable. Because, unlike her mom, she's got a huge family by her side and a guy who's ready to worship the ground she walks on, even at 18, which I must confess, is kinda stupid. I couldn't see past their mutual attraction to a deeper relationship. Almost 40 percent of this book was rather depressing to read. I did like the hero, but he's not someone I'd fangirl over after DJ and the like. I'm sorry to say I didn't like this as much as the first book, because I was pretty excited when the blurb was out. Still, I'm going with 4 starts because Sonali's writing style is awesome as ever and the way she handles touchy subjects like marital rape, child neglect and alcohol abuse was commendable.

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. I found this to be a sensitive, satisfying update.Note: while this is a follow-up to Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, Recipe for Persuasion stands just fine on its own.

4 stars! It’s funny because I keep seeing low ratings/negative reviews for this series and I seem to be the oddball that really enjoys it! Sonali Dev does her own spin on Austen novels, and I wouldn’t even really call them a retelling but a reimagining of the Austen world. I don’t get too stuck on her following the story but she gets the heart of it down for sure. Recipes for Persuasion is a second chance romance between chef Ashne Raje and British football star Rico Silva. They fell in love when they were in high school and were torn apart when Ashne’s family didn’t approve. Twelve years later Ashne joins a cooking competition show in an effort to save her restaurant, and Rico Silva is the celebrity she’s assigned.I think I liked this book (and series) so much because I listened to it on audiobook. The paperback is more than 400 pages which is super lengthy for a romance and I think the audio format works because for me it just flew by. Persuasion is one of my favorite Austen novels and I enjoyed this take on it. The discussions of family trauma, misunderstandings throughout the years, family secrets: all of it worked perfectly in this book. The only thing I didn’t love was I didn’t quite see the moment Rico switched in his affections for Ashne, but otherwise I really enjoyed listening to this book.

I drooled my way through the first book of this Jane Austen–based series, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. Would the sophomore effort measure up?Well, almost. I am a big fan of Dev’s cluster of characters, the Raje family, Indian aristocrats transplanted to a more egalitarian California but still trailing clouds of privilege in their wake. They are glamorous but grounded, rooted in but not bound by their culture and traditions. They lead rich lives (in the values sense, more than the economic sense) but also encounter real suffering. These books are not your typical “boy meets girl, boy and girl quarrel and misunderstand each other while fighting attraction, boy and girl get together” stories; though the stories follow that arc, they transcend it on every page, both in style and in substance.The first book was inspired by Pride and Prejudice, a book Jane Austen called “light, bright, and sparkling,” so it’s not surprising that P,P, and Other Flavors was a cheerier novel than Recipe for Persuasion, based on Austen’s most wistful and melancholy book. Even so, I was unprepared for the level of trauma faced by the central characters; their histories are deeply gutting. The heroine is Ashna Raje, a thirty-year-old running the restaurant founded by her father and the place where he died. She is so paralyzed by her life that she passes out every time she tries to cook a new recipe—unfortunately, as a result, her restaurant is failing. Not only is her father dead but her mother has been MIA from her life for years. The hero, Rico Silva, is a world-famous soccer player who has lost his career to a knee injury, his parents to a car accident, and his childhood sweetheart, Ashna, to the pressures brought to bear on the young. A third character who—in a major departure from the Persuasion storyline—keeps trying to take over the narrative is Ashna’s mother, who chose life in India and good works over life with her (hated) husband and child in California. All three have suffered more than their fair share, all three have developed a carapace that shields their quiveringly vulnerable insides from the world. Ashna in particular is so locked down that she has never been truthful to anyone, ever, except maybe Rico a bit when they were kids. And that ended in betrayal and abandonment.Rico decides it’s time to lay the ghost of Ashna to rest, so he somewhat implausibly maneuvers his way onto a Food Network cooking show where he is paired with her in a competition. She has no warning that he’s about to turn up, with predictably disastrous results. Given her cooking block, she is scared enough about the competition already without having to face him down. Before cameras. At the same moment that her mother turns up and tries to rekindle their relationship. But she has to go through with it as her only hope to save the restaurant.The author has a technique of spinning out suspense about people’s backstories till the reader is screaming to know the reasons for their current actions. In the first book of the series, this tactic worked well because the suspense was about a secondary character. Here it is less effective because it is details of Ashna’s life that are not revealed till the climax. As a result, she exists as a bit of a blank through most of the book, making it harder to attach to her. We know she is deeply traumatized, and therefore frozen both emotionally and professionally. We learn a lot about her feelings about her mother and other family members, but relatively little about her feelings for Rico. We know she believes Rico betrayed her, but Rico also believes that she betrayed him. How that can be is left hanging for too long in my opinion. Instead of reasons why, what we get is a lot of her powerful physical attraction to him, and stretched out over several hundred pages that became monotonous to me. There was a little glimpse early on of the mutual intuition and deep curiosity about each other that drew them together as teenagers (and that is more, I must admit, than Jane Austen gives us of the attraction between the lovers in Persuasion), but then too little about their adult selves made a relationship make sense. They obsessively observe each other and obsessively care, but why?This I felt to be a flaw at the heart of an otherwise wonderful book. Western readers can learn a lot about the cruel, warped patriarchy of Indian culture, circumstances that reduce the gender-based discrimination prevalent in the United States to a microscopic level, as one character points out gently near the end. Many people in the book had to overcome horrendous events to live lives that had meaning and opened up space for happiness, and others had huge issues to forgive before they could learn to grow. There’s a lot of pain here—too much for any readers going into the book expecting a rom-com—but a lot of gain as well.I give Sonali Dev massive props for not just refreshing but also expanding and reimagining her genre, and consider her one of the masters. Despite my minor qualms, I devoured this book over a couple of days, and now get to look forward to rereading the first two books before the third comes out. Soon? Please?Trigger warnings for all sorts of interpersonal and self-inflicted violence, off the page but central to the plot. Sex scenes are few and stop at the bedroom door.

Comparing this to book #1, it's not as perfect and not as good as the first one. BUT it's still freaking good because when you're comparing to a masterpiece like Pride, Prejudice, and other Flavors, it's hard to live up to.If you like gut-wrenching angst, swoon worthy romance, and family drama that would mess you up when all the truth is revealed--pick this one up. I absolutely loved the mother/daughter relationship that really needed to be mended with communication. I also loved the yearning these our hero and heroine experienced that made me ansty for them to get together. The only thing is that if you HATE miscommunication as a reason why problems start, you might not like this one as much. Although it wasn't pure miscommunication, it definitely played lightly on things as to why the problems existed. This south asian romance explores arranged marriages and I know from friends that they're tired of south asian romances with arranged marriage themes but this one is different in a way. The romance was not romanticized for the characters involved. It's more raw and real. GO CHECK THIS ONE OUT!

3.5 starsI received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. She was the one who couldn’t be the kind of daughter who made her mother want to stay. She was the daughter who wasn’t enough for her father to give up whatever it was he got from his scotch. Recipe for Persuasion continues an intimate look into the lives of the Raje family members, an Indian royal family living in California who readers were introduced to in Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. Newcomers could jump in here, as while past characters still remain a part of the story, this focuses on a different branch. Ashna is the daughter of the younger Raje son, a man who let being a prince and the indulgences of such a position lead him to more selfish and easier decisions, choices that greatly affected Ashna's childhood and turned her into an extremely closed off and dealing with depression and anxiety induced by PTSD now adult. Ashna met Rico when they were in highschool and the two secretly dated for two years before there was a major blow-out involving her father. Twelve years later, Rico decides that he wants at least some closure with Ashna and decides to get on the reality cooking show “Cooking With the Stars” where Ashna will be competing as a chef. She was with him even when she wasn’t with him. The beginning sets up our characters with Ashna still reeling and dealing with the fallout of her alcoholic father's suicide twelve years earlier. To escape after the suicide, Ashna went to culinary school in Paris, leaving her father's restaurant, Curried Dreams, in the hands of employees who in turn embezzled money and has her still trying to stave off bankruptcy. While Ashna's intensely private and gets severe panic attacks whenever she tries to alter her Baba's (father) recipes, severely hampering her cooking ability, another fight with her mother has her agreeing to be on the show. We get less of an in depth look at Rico's life, currently, he's just retired from being a star football (soccer) player and musing over the fact he is godfather to more than one ex-girlfriend's children. He lost his parents young and while his mother was his father's mistress, they loved each other and he had a happy childhood. There's some drawing out, in regards to the pain he felt as a child over his father never really being able to claim him publicly, through Ashna wanting to keep their relationship secret in highschool and feeling like she choose her father over him, to give his character's emotions some depth. However, he's more to the side and why I'm not sure I'd fully call this genre romance but more of a mashup of women's fiction and, what I call, literary romance. Have you ever thought about what it means to hide what’s important to you from those you love? What isn't immediately apparent but instead is slowly, onion layers peeled away, is that the main relationship of the story isn't about romantic love but mother and daughter. Most of the first half showcases Ashna's point-of-view of how her fierce advocate for girl and women's rights mother, Shoban, constantly abandoned her and how that made her feel unloved and unwanted. The second half gives readers Shoban's side of the story, with flashbacks and her current thoughts and feelings. Shoban's character came very close to stealing the show, if not doing so at times, and I found myself almost wishing this was her story. She’d finally listen.If you're going into this strictly for the romance, you'd end up missing what makes Sonali Dev's writing so beautifully piercing at times; the profound way it speaks family relationships and how quietly devastating and loving they can be. Ashna's aunt, Mina, calmly speaks this to Ashna:“I like to believe we changed things at least a little, your mother more than me. But in this changed world, you girls can’t seem to see how it was for us. You can’t see our obstacles because we removed them for you. And now you get to judge us from a perspective that we weren’t lucky enough to enjoy.”. It is a fairly quick moment but has such power when Ashna relates it to her mother. “Do you mean it?” Her voice was a whisper. He swallowed, his thickly stubbled jaw tightening. “Mean what?”“Everything you say to me with your eyes?” Along with the poignant writing, I took delight in some of the little details, like how Dev continues with her Jane Austen tie-ins. As you can guess by the title, Ashna and Federico 's second chance love story is inspirit of Anne and Frederick from Persuasion. The closeness of their names is cute but the hashtag that grows from fan's love of the pair on the reality cooking show, #Ashico, “which when said out loud sounded far too much like the Hindi word ashiquo which, disastrously enough, meant “lovers.””, is a perfect book's cultural little tie-in bow.While I didn't quite get all I needed from Rico and his relationship with Ashna, this story was more about the forest than the trees for me. The overarching look at how familial relationships shape and define us and how that leads us to shape and define our own relationships. Dev's writing always has a beating heart underneath it that never fails to move and connect with me some way, I'm looking forward to going on the next emotional journey with the Raje family.

Wow.You should all be very, very jealous of me right now because I got to read an early version of this book, and you're going to want it. Of course, now I have the unenviable task of putting down my thoughts before I forget them while not spoiling the book in any sort of way. I will say that many Kleenexs were lost in the reading of this book. If you would like to have your innards turned inside out and then put back to rights thus leaving you with a happy but weary glow, then this is the book for you. If you like soccer players with man buns, this is the book for you. If you have a chai addiction, love cooking shows, soccer, or stories about family--specifically mothers and daughters, then this is the book for you.As you can tell from the title, this book takes inspiration from Austen's Persuasion just as the one before played on Pride and Prejudice. Sonali captures both the wit and the inner turmoil of characters in a way that lends itself perfectly to an Austen retelling.

This is a fabulous romantic comedy about a chef who goes on a reality cooking show to save her restaurant and finds herself paired with the first love who broke her heart. Passionate, touching and hilarious!

Persuasion is one of my favorite Jane Austen novels, so of course I was going to read this modern romance that riffs on Persuasion‘s themes!Recipe for Persuasion is a loose follow-up to last year’s Pride, Prejudice & Other Flavors. The Raje family is still the center of the story, but here, the focus shifts to Ashna Raje, who was a supporting character in the previous novel.Before getting too far into discussing Recipe for Persuasion, I want to get one thing straight, which is that the blurb above is very misleading. I think if you go into this book expecting a heartwarming romantic comedy or a fresh, fun, and enchanting romantic comedy, you’ll be both disappointed and quite possibly very confused.Because at no time in my reading of Recipe for Persuasion did I feel it was a comedy. Not at all.Which does not mean it was not a good read. I actually enjoyed it very much. But readers should know that this is a much sadder and darker story than the synopsis would make it out to be.Okay, let’s get down to business. Ashna and Rico were high school sweethearts, very much in love, but each with a ton of baggage related to family expectations and demands. They dreamed and planned for a life together, but ended up apart after a really terrible set of circumstances, and the faulty communications at the time which led each to believe that the other had betrayed him/her.(Yet another example of bad communications leading to heartbreak, which is a standard trope of the genre, and which drives me bonkers as a plot point… but I digress.)Now, twelve years later, Ashna is a French-trained chef who’s struggling to keep her late father’s classic Indian restaurant viable, and Rico is a superstar soccer player forced into early retirement by a devastating knee injury.When Rico is reminded of Ashna while attending a friend’s bachelor party, he decides to Google her. And when he learns that she’ll be appearing on Cooking with the Stars, he makes sure to get a slot on the reality show as her cooking partner. Rico is looking for closure, a way to get past the hurt from all those years ago when Ashna turned him away, giving into family pressure that he just wasn’t good enough for the high-class Raje family.Meanwhile, Ashna is consumed by the guilt and trauma that accompanied her father’s death, experiences horrible panic attacks when she tries to cook anything not on her father’s original menu, is estranged from her super-feminist mother… and has never, ever gotten over Rico.Their first meeting on set for the cooking show involves a near-miss with a very sharp knife, and suddenly, they’re a viral internet sensation. The pressure is on. Each wants to win… and also to prove to the other that they’re totally fine, which is so not the case.Over the course of the book, we learn much more about Ashna’s past. Especially powerful are the chapters told through her mother’s point of view, which show her experiences as a young woman and the horrific situation she was forced into. Here’s where content warnings might be important: Someone expecting a romantic comedy probably won’t be prepared for scenes of abuse and rape, and I can only imagine how traumatic it would be to encounter these scenes while expecting a light romance.This piece of the story is handled very sensitively, but of course, it’s awful and heartbreaking to read about. It also explains so much about Ashna’s experiences as a child, her parents’ marriage, her lingering resentment toward her mother, and her inability to move forward in a meaningful way in any sort of adult relationship. There’s really a lot to unpack here.On a brighter note, Ashna and Rico have great chemistry, and I really enjoyed the scenes that show their teen years and the early stages of their romance. Because she is so traumatized, Ashna isn’t exactly a fun character (sympathetic, yes, but not fun), but luckily, Rico is — with his swagger, charm, and man-bun, he’s clearly supposed to be walking sex appeal, and this definitely comes through in the writing.The San Francisco setting is a big plus for me, and I enjoyed revisiting the Raje family members from Pride, Prejudice & Other Flavors. As for Austen elements — the general themes of Persuasion are present, but not in such an obvious way that it feels like a retelling. As with Persuasion, the young lovers are separated in response to family pressure, but not really in the same way as in the Austen novel. Still, it’s an interesting way to weave the classic into a modern romance, and bonus points to the author for having Rico quote Frederick Wentworth’s “half agony, half hope” line!Overall, Recipe for Persuasion is a very good read, although the balance between truly painful memories and emotions and the bustle of a reality show doesn’t always work in terms of tone. Still, I really enjoyed Ashna and Rico’s journey back to one another (there’s never any doubt, after all, that they’ll find love again)… and who can resist a book that lovingly describes so much amazing food?Maybe that’s my main complaint, when all is said and done: This book should come with samples! I want to try every dish and cup of tea that’s described in Recipe for Persuasion.Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. Full review at Bookshelf Fantasies.

This was so good! I loved every minute! Her characters are so vivid and complex. And I love how she weaves really important topics seamlessly into the narrative. Definitely worth reading! 5 stars

(free review copy) I LOVED this one! The romance, the mother-daughter relationship story arc, the FOOD, the cooking show - all of it. I actually liked it better than the first in the series and can't wait to read more about the Raje family!

A Complex Flavor Profile Following her stellar modern-day Pride and Prejudice adaptation, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, Sonali Dev’s second book in The Rajes Series, Recipe for Persuasion combines the flavors of Jane Austen’s novel about second chances with complicated family dynamics and cultural diversity. In this standalone story, readers see Ashna Raje, the reserved and timid thirty-year-old chef and owner of Curried Dreams – her father’s restaurant – do the unthinkable and compete in a reality cooking show competition. Ashna isn’t one to do put herself on public display and her feelings about cooking are complicated, but her restaurant needs saving and Ashna has the determination to prove all the naysayers in her life wrong.Ashna’s misgivings about participating in Cooking with the Stars intensifies exponentially when she learns the celebrity teammate she is paired with is…Rico Silva. The internationally-recognized professional soccer player who she fell in love with in high school yet hasn’t seen or heard from in twelve years!! But Rico isn’t the only person to have left Ashna… Long ago Ashna’s mom, Shoban, made the choice to stay in India and pursue her important advocacy work for women’s rights and sports for girls instead of moving to America with Ashna and her father. And since then their relationship has deteriorated to one of resentment, pain, and insurmountable distance. Saving Curried Dreams, appearing on Cooking with the Stars, facing Rico, and talking to her mother…poor Ashna has her plate full!After deeply loving and admiring Sonali Dev’s brilliant gender-swap and culturally diverse Pride and Prejudice adaptation, I must admit it was a challenge not to have high expectations for Recipe for Persuasion. But I needn’t have worried. Sonali Dev found some incredibly profound correlations to Persuasion to feature in her story. Ones that are so understated, discerning, and beautifully connected. Persuasion isn’t just a tale about regret and being persuaded by others, it is also a story about growing up without a mother, being a daughter with limited rights/options, and permitting yourself to have what you want most. Ashna’s difficult relationship with her mother and Shoban’s own heartrending secrets were exceptionally moving storylines that were surprising yet astute choices for a Persuasion inspired story.Another Persuasion connection/parallel I greatly enjoyed in this story were the modern-day Anne and Wentworth recreations – Ashna and Rico. Like Anne, Ashna has been neglected by members of her family. But unlike Anne, there are many scenes from her childhood that have intensely hurt Ashna and left deep scars. Many people in Ashna’s life view her as fragile, and she may appear that way because of her sadness and burdens, but there is a part of Ashna that is fierce, independent, and strong. And it is a part of herself that only one other person has seen…*sigh* I love Rico. I love how he purposefully causes his reentrance into Ashna’s life, and I love how his reasons for it are about wanting closure and answers. I loved every moment of Rico and Ashna together – there is so much they don’t say, so much in their past, so much we learn and witness along the way. It was a riveting journey.I must devote this next paragraph to Sonali Dev’s beautiful writing style. It is poetic, vivid, and full of emotion and metaphor. With such tangible feelings described, the reader is easily pulled into these characters’ world and feel an intrinsic connection to them. I am very grateful for the flashback scenes of Ashna’s, Rico’s, and Shoban’s pasts which further enhances the reader’s understanding of these characters personalities and decisions. Some of these characters may be hard to like or understand at first, but that can change as the layers begin to peel away.Like a master chef creating an elevated offering from a beloved classic dish, Sonali Dev’s homage to Jane Austen’s Persuasion is full of complex components, vibrant layers, and subtle notes of Jane Austen that work together harmoniously. Recipe for Persuasion is most worthy of praise, and is a story I heartily recommend! I so hope we soon hear that another book in this remarkable series is in this works! *fingers crossed for it to be about Yash…with maybe a S&S tie in?*Note: Due to the use of strong language and reference to a nonconsensual sexual encounter (nothing explicit), I’d recommend this book for readers over the age of 14.Austenesque Reviews

Once again, Sonali Dev has penned an emotional, heartfelt novel rich with family drama, angst, humor, and swoon-worthy second chance romance. From the jaw-dropping moment Rico and Ashna meet again, we feel the connection between these two and immediately start rooting for their love to conquer all that has kept them apart. Incredibly, Dev weaves us a tale of two second chances--one between Ashna and Rico, and another between Ashna and her mother. Through her beautiful writing, Dev shows us that while our past might shape who we are today, there's always the potential for change and growth that will help us attain our happily ever after.This second book in Dev's Austen retellings series is a definite recommend from me!