Yash Raje, California's first Indian American gubernatorial candidate, has always known exactly what he wants—and how to use his privileged background to get it. He attributes his success to a simple mantra: If you control your feelings, you can control the world. But when a hate crime at a rally critically injures his friend, Yash's easy life suddenly feels like a lie, his control an illusion. When he tries to get back on the campaign trail, he blacks out with panic. Desperate to keep Yash's condition from leaking to the media, his family turns to the one person they trust—his sister's best friend, India Dashwood, California's foremost stress management coach. Raised by a family of yoga gurus, India has helped San Francisco's high-strung overachievers for a decade without so much as altering her breath. But this man, with his simmering intensity and absolute faith in his political beliefs, is like no other. Yash has spent a lifetime repressing everything to succeed, including their one magical night together ten years ago—a too-brief, too-bring passion that if rekindled threatens to destroy the dream he's willingly shouldered for his family and community . . . until now.
USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories that explore universal issues. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews, and she has won numerous accolades, including the American Library Association's award for best romances, the RT Reviewers Choice Award for best contemporary romance, and multiple RT Seals of Excellence. Dev has been a RITA finalist and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world's most perfect dog.
Some of my favorite romance books and rom-coms have one thing in common: the Politician. For some reason, I really am a sucker for romances with one of the main characters being a politician, and Incense and Sensibility certainly does not disappoint. From the first second, though, I had a feeling that this novel would both play into the trope, and also make some clear departures from it. Sonali Dev is a masterful storyteller, who has done the same thing in previous novels to make her own works more clever—so I couldn't wait to see what she would do with this archetype. The most major way that I noticed Dev departing from this archetype is by Yash's mental state—unlike the other politician romances, Yash is not as put-together as he seems. Still unsure as to how to be the kind of person he wants to be, his uncertainty is exacerbated by his survival of an assassination attempt that severely injures one of his good friends. This clear departure from the archetype is a necessary one—too often this archetype makes the man out to be perfect, already sure of himself, and misleads the other main character that he is arrogant. When, in reality, the politician is still just human and needs to be treated as such, both by his romantic interest and the author. Dev handles Yash with much care, making him a more relatable and more complex male lead than I've read in years.
From the first page, I knew this book would be poised to tackle bigger questions than the series's previous two novels. Sonali Dev has has certainly grown into a more sophisticated storyteller, which we can tell by grappling not only a love story between Yash and India, but also by weaving other tensions into her story: the importance of politics and policies; complicated family dynamics; health, both mental and physical; and PTSD. Incorporating all of these elements into Yash's and India's stories makes their journey back to one another more rewarding, and also makes their characters feel real, like people we know or could know. That is another thing that makes Dev's books so special—characters who feel real to us are ones that we can connect to or ones that can inspire us. India and Yash certainly have their inspirational moments, and they have their moments that makes them human that remind us as readers that it's okay to have bad days, bad moments. As Emily Henry said, "Dev's characters feel so real—so charming and so, so big-hearted." Couldn't have said it better myself.
Sonali Dev's previous two The Rajes books have clearer connections to their retellings, or maybe it's just because I am more familiar with Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, and less familiar with Sense and Sensibility. In fact, the only thing I really remember from that book is the way lovelorn Marianne falls head over heels in love with Mr. Willoughby who eventually leaves her utterly heartbroken. The exact details of Elinor's relationship are fuzzier, but I did remember that she previously had something with her love interest before coming back to it years later and finally getting together with him. Sonali Dev does draw these parallels—India is Elinor and China is Marianne, left heartbroken by a woman who doesn't actually want to date her the way China deserves. I am sure there are other cleverer parallels between the behavior of the characters and the backstory of them, but as Sense and Sensibility is lesser known to me, I was unable to fully draw them. However, knowing just the basics, I found Incense and Sensibility to be an entertaining retelling of the classic. Sense and Sensibility, along with Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, are lesser known retelling-inspirations, which is why I am less familiar with them, but nonetheless was the perfect retelling-inspiration for Yash's story with India.
Near the ending, I was very nervous at how everything would be resolved! I figured China and Brandy would end up together in some capacity, but the ending for our main characters India and Yash seemed much less clear, especially with the constant interference of Naina. Naina is a character who is fully fleshed out for the author, but a character who remains somewhat of an enigma to the reader, and her constant interference makes it impossible for us to guess how the ending is going to play out. Naina didn't play a big role at the beginning, but her presence was hard to ignore near the end. In an opposite fashion, India's struggles with her mom's health played a huge part in India's life at the beginning, but it dropped off near the ending. I appreciated this storyline in the beginning, as I found that it paralleled really nicely with some real readers' experiences with covid-19—yet, it felt like it was resolved to quickly, and too nicely, considering how much headspace it takes up for India in the beginning of the novel. Despite this somewhat unbalanced nature of the Naina and Tara tensions, I do believe it was done deliberately to maintain constant maximum tension for India and Yash throughout the novel. I also loved how, in the end, it did all get resolved very nicely. It had a fairytale ending, in a sense, that's how nicely it was all resolved—and after all the tension, and the hope, and the disaster in the novel, it was a perfectly satisfying way to end it!
Thankfully, Dev is not yet done with her Austen-inspired romance novels! The Emma Project is slated for a 2022 release according to Goodreads—but we are pending other details. Stay tuned, though, because I'm sure Dev's fourth novel in The Rajes series is sure to be a hit!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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