4.75 holi-stic, colorful, heartwarming, dancing stars singing baby’s got blue skies over head but in this I’m a rain cloud,you know she likes a dry ki4.75 holi-stic, colorful, heartwarming, dancing stars singing baby’s got blue skies over head but in this I’m a rain cloud,you know she likes a dry kind of love oh ohhh sweetest thing stars!!!Yeap I’m singing Sweetest Thing from U2 after I finished this book!
My head turns because of overloaded feelings are now everywhere ! After reading this book I feel joy, hope, love, genuineness, wholeheartedness, happiness, freedom , adrenaline, optimism pumping into my blood!
Sweetie , there is not something about her, there is everything about her! She can run, sing, whatever she seats a goal she may achieve! She’s strong, brilliant, intelligent, funny and she understands people, she observes then empathizes and connects with their feelings! She’s the one! She might be overweighted but she accepts who she is, she doesn’t have inferiority complex! But unfortunately her mother has!
Our story starts with our hero’s , down to earth, confused but mostly sweet, friendly Ashish who’s feeling like he’s overshadowed by his brother happily in love with his girlfriend because his own girlfriend has cheated on him which destroyed his self confidence ! Now he decided his mother can play matchmaker and find a candidate trustworthy family for him to date!
Her mom finds the best candidate, Sweetie! Yesss!
But don’t get your hopes up! Because Sweetie’s mother thinks that her daughter is too fat and she’s not equal to Ashish! If they date, everybody will laugh behind them so she rejects Ashish’s mother proposal on phone .
And the worst part, Sweetie hears everything her mother told about her!!! ( Yess! I’m volunteer to give free punching gloves to everyone for teaching the lesson she needs to learn and all the mothers think low about their daughters plan to destroy their own child’s self confidence!!!)
But Swetie not only cries and resents, she acts behind her mother’s back and meets with Ashish!
And you know what Ashish likes her appearance and her challenge to race! But our naive Ashish spills the beans and tells his parents his meeting with her!
So their parents take the opportunity to teach their son Indian culture and show their blessings about dating with Sweetie by preparing a full contract designates their date locations, activities!( From the sacred temples to Holi Festival and nuttiest aunt visit you can ever imagine! At least fourth place will be decided by the couple! Yeap, Ashish’s parents in the middle of conservative and bad shit crazy)
Yeap Sweetie accepts to sign a contract and obey it literally because Ashish’s parents promised her, they are going to keep as secret their dating from Sweetie’s parents till her birthday!
And Sweetie gotta prove her mother she can date a popular, rich, good looking boy for the first time in her life. She has nothing to shame about herself or her appearance! She loves who she is so her loved ones should respect her opinions! This is her rebellion! So I raise my hand and say hell yeahhh in Sweetie we trust!!!
I cut the points from the secrecy of Ashish who is texting to his ex ( she cheated on her but he is still heartbroken so he admits to Sweetie that their relationship can be only physical!!!) behind Sweetie’s back! And his friends repeated too many times he should give Sweetie a chance!!! What the heck!!!
Well at least Ashish comes to his senses and he meets with his only for closure! And falling in love parts, one on one basketball game, Holi festival, their text messages give you awwww, yesss, yayyy moments!!!
I enjoyed this book, loved the heroine and literally I wanted to give a big hug because she was so real so amazing! I loved the couple’s passion, chemistry, emotional growing!
I also loved the references from Downtown Abbey to Dean Winchester, Aquaman to Popular Bollywood Star Hritnik Roshan!
As a summary our hero has some flaws but our strong heroine successfully overcompensates his weaknesses!!
It’s a great, entertaining, heartwarming story that I highly recommend to anyone who needs to learn love themselves!!!...more
Three point five, should I round it up or down ….Up, down , up down, funk you up, up for fantastically developed, amazingly-rounded, strong hero and hThree point five, should I round it up or down ….Up, down , up down, funk you up, up for fantastically developed, amazingly-rounded, strong hero and heroine, sweet, enjoyable rom-com materials capture your heart by extending through pages, down for cliches, third person narration, up for in the name of Jane Austen love , but down for “ it is not close to any other Jane Austen” books, there are too many cheesy parts, oh come on decide, okay, rounded down to three stars.
First of all, I think advertising this book as Middle Eastern version of “Pride and Prejudice” is not the right definition. It reminded me of soft Shakespearean comedies like “Much Ado About Nothing”, “As You like it”.
Another book is also on my list advertised as Indian version of the book named “Pride and Prejudice and other flavors” but as we may understand from the name , this book was a real retelling. Its blurb was closer to the classic novel.
So before starting the book, we may know that Ayesha and Khalid’s story was so different from Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam( most people call him my his last name, Mr. Darcy, we blame it on Colin Firth for being memorable one and his performance was imprinted on my mind forever!)
I liked Ayesha, strong, sarcastic, smart ( in my opinion there was not much similarities with Elizabeth Bennet and her characterization), independent woman who doesn’t only try learning to exist but live , express and find herself.
Mostly I liked the chemistry and connection, dialogues between Ayesha and Khalid and that pushed me to round up my stars. But … yeap, there is a big BUT that stopped me to do that.
What I didn’t like about the book : The hatred Ayesha had to endure and fight against made me want to toss the book too many times from my hands. Too many characters and unstopping drama parts are some elements of Middle Eastern culture but those parts didn’t fit this kind of romantic comedy. A little angst and edgy parts are spices of a good-developed novel but if you add over-exaggerated drama, you kill the romance and create a soap-opera kind of melodramatic novel.
And don’t forget the pace. I got lost so many times. Maybe I had some issues about writing style but I had so many hard times to concentrate and give my full attention to Ayesha and Khalid because too many characters got in their way.
Only Khalid’s parts about his family’s pressure and his ethical and religious norms giving him hard time to make a choice between his beliefs or being expelled from his society are the closest parts about the prejudice.
I honestly liked the effort and the book gave me too many food vibes but the things I didn’t like beat the parts I mostly like. Maybe if I didn’t think it was retelling of Pride and Prejudice before I started it and coded this one on my brain as an independent Muslim boy and girl’s sweet and dramatic love story, I would have a better and fairer perspective.
So much special thanks to Berkley Books and NetGalley for sending me ARC COPY of this book in exchange my honest review.
OMG here comes my FOUR what a swoony, sweet, heartwarming love/hate relationship at office story I’ve read, I’m smiling like an idiot for hours and doOMG here comes my FOUR what a swoony, sweet, heartwarming love/hate relationship at office story I’ve read, I’m smiling like an idiot for hours and don’t forget the irresistible, undeniable, pant-melting chemistry of the couple, amazing break for me after all the thrillers giving me nightmares I’ve read lately STARS!
Hating Games meets Beautiful Bastard meets Allure of Julian Lefray meets Tangled! It’s a great combination of frenemies at office novels. I was about to pass this book at first, because I thought I read too many similar examples about undeniable attraction of two colleagues who are acting immature, spoiled and they do everything to sabotage their relationship and they are so afraid of being sacked so they keep their relationship secret kind of romances.
BUT the reasons what makes this book different from the others ARE:
-The book is focused to Emmie( straightforward, smart, a little bossy but mostly sweet, nice, helpful, hardworker) and Tate’s stories( tough, handsome, annoying, reserved, antisocial but smart, problem-solver. Then we learn he’s also kind-hearted, caring, romantic, passionate man.) As we flip through the pages, we start to learn how their characters evolve, how their past experiences affected their judgments and how their relationship started to develop from work colleagues to friends and finally to lovers. So there is no carrier risk or rivalry, competition between them.
- I loved the similarities of hero and heroine. They’re different from normal which made the people around them judge and call them names when they were so young. They’re both secluded, observant, sarcastic people who have hard times to open their hearts and start to trust the people. It’s so hard to love them. They’re so natural, realistic, honestly developed characters! Of course it’s so easy to root for them. You can find parts of yourself when you dig more about their attributes.
- Like Joshua and Lucy from Sally Thorne’s “Hating Game”, they got closer when the heroine gets sick and the hero takes care of her but Tate and Emmie’s connection was so intense, romantic, and more emotional. I don’t know how many times I sighed, smiled, made indefinable awkward happy voices! (My husband threw pillow at my way but he missed. Ha ha…Evil laugh) Connection parts between characters on this book were better written than Hating Games.
-There were so many hot scenes on this book. Don’t get me wrong! Till the end they slept together but they didn’t have sex. But Emmie’s bathing scene when only a shower curtain separated them was sweaty, heart throbbing, nasty!
- At first Tate mostly acted like a jerk but at the final part we understood his reasons. A part at his high school reunion a little irritated me. (Actually I pissed off. And it was a little hard to accept what he did to Emmie which made me cut one star. )
-Instead of Tate’s reasons for acting like douchebag around Emmie, I enjoyed this book too much and I didn’t want to put it down. I carried it like an accessory with me. I know I invented a strange trend to wear a book on my neck but this is so sweet, swoony, lovable book. I don’t want to let it go! And the most important thing is as soon as I put the book down, I was feeling joyful, hopeful, happy and I had still awkward silly smile on my face( Maybe I could be doppelganger of Pennywise and wear my clown suit before Halloween if I keep smiling like that!) THIS BOOK MADE ME HAPPY!
I’m so glad to see there are too many debut novels released on this year and most of the books are really good, enjoyable, smartly-written ones. I’m volunteered to read upcoming books of Sarah Smith. It was pleasure to meet a new writer. Because when it comes to romance, my favorite authors mostly disappointed me.
Special thanks to Berkley and NetGalley to share this amazing ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review! I wholeheartedly enjoyed this book so much!...more
Four my head is spinning and my grey cells started to give me “S.O.S” because of too much usage, feel like I got too many slaps on my face, the authorFour my head is spinning and my grey cells started to give me “S.O.S” because of too much usage, feel like I got too many slaps on my face, the author definitely played too many mind games and she’s the winner stars!
There are three sides of this book’s story. Caroline’s, Aiden’s and the truth.( it’s out there! Ready to be found by Scully and Mulder)
Caroline tells us she’s the victim. Her husband is cheater. He vacuums all their bank accounts and shows up at their beach house party with his Russian mistress. He wants divorce and plans to flee the country. So Caroline gets drunk and has one night stand with Aiden and guess what happened as soon as their sex is over, he told her “I LOVE YOU” ( whattttt?) HE WANTS MORE. He turns into Sting who sings “ Every Breath You Take” meets You’s Joe Goldberg but the hottest Irish version !
He is determined enough to get rid of the husband, get the woman, get the house (Yes, he’s also obsessed with her house, we’re gonna understand why at the end of the book) ride his horse into the sunset!( or instead of that he got his horses to the old town road paved with prison stones )
And let’s hear out Aiden! There’s so much negativity on his side: Is he an ex felony of manslaughter (We can call it crime of passion, her girlfriend cheats on him and he fights with the other guy and bang! He accidentally kills him. That’s his statement, I’m not judging!), he’s 16 years younger than her (I’m not sure this is bad thing! It might be a big winning for Caroline who defines herself as a cougar), he’s broke, aimless, not having a proper job and he’s so blindly in love with her and he thinks she loves him back! I hear some kind of ominous music at the background ! Nananaa !
Okay, our cute psycho ( we’re not sure but his obsessive attitudes towards Caroline makes us think there’s something wrong with our guy or he’s ultra-Alpha male who has real control issues) joined Caroline’s spinning class and appeared as a waiter at the restaurant where she had a family dinner( you guess right, he wasn’t even working there)
And facts: Husband dies! Aiden gets convicted, Caroline is nowhere to be found!
I like the other’s writing style and technique to tell the same parts with two different POVS. I always adored “he said she said” kind of story-telling.
So whodunit, who tells the truth, whose side of story is more real?
It’s really complex book! But some parts made me alerted and I already found the truth at the beginning. But not worry because it’s not so foreseeable. I just concentrated so hard to find the answer on this one! The author might fool me so easily! Because she designed her twists so smartly, they’re impeccable !
And of course I like the ending! I’m so happy karma won and whatever went around came around! Hell yeah to the poetic justice!
I only cut the points because I had some hard times to empathize the characters. But this is not author’s flaw , this is all about my nature, I’m always dubious about the persons’ motives at first so this pushed me to be suspicious and alert about each word the characters say and in this case, it served me very well to catch the details and fill the blanks!
It was amazing, riveting and energizing book! I highly recommend it to the twisty, edgy, mind bending books lovers! Thank to the publishers for ARC copy and special thanks to NetGalley and thanks to the author who made me need brain cells transplant after bending my mind with her clever writing!...more
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