



Sunshine and Spice
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When two complete opposites agree to fake date in order to solve their cultural dilemmas, they find the only force more powerful than an immigrant mother’s matchmaking schemes might just be true love.
Naomi Kelly will do anything to make her new brand consulting business a success. When she lands a career saving contract to rebrand the Mukherjee family’s failing local bazaar, she knows there can be no mistakes. But as the “oops” baby of a free-spirited Bengali mother, Naomi’s lack of connection to her roots represents everything Gia Mukherjee disdains.
Enter, Dev Mukherjee.
Dev knows everything his mother wants…including her wish for him to get married, like, yesterday. When Gia hires a matchmaker (without, you know, asking him), Dev vows to do whatever it takes to avoid ending up in a cold, loveless marriage. When a potential match assumes Naomi is his girlfriend, the solution to both their problems becomes clear: Naomi will pretend to date Dev in order to sabotage his mother’s matchmaking efforts in exchange for lessons in Bengali culture. Flawless plan, right?
But as Naomi and Dev bond over awful dancing at Garba, couples cooking classes, and tackling the rebrand as a team, they start to realize while their relationship may be fake, their feelings for each other are starting to become very real. As the line between reality and rumor blurs, Naomi and Dev must confront what it means to fit the mold, and decide how much they’re willing to risk for love.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Culture and commerce collide in this fun opposites-attract romance. Naomi’s new brand-consulting business could really take off if she lands a contract to revamp Gia Mukherjee’s massive local bazaar. But Naomi’s total disconnection from her South Asian roots would be a deal-breaker for the proudly Bengali Gia. Enter Dev, Gia’s handsome son. To avoid his mother’s matchmaking, he agrees to enter a fake relationship with Naomi, and in exchange, he’ll teach her about Bengali culture. Naomi is a wonderful, relatable heroine with an understandably complex relationship with her heritage. You can feel how much she craves a connection to it, though, and we loved seeing her explore it, especially at the Mukherjees’ lively family dinners. The ever-rising tension between Naomi and Dev is so expertly paced that you just know their fake romance will turn into something swelteringly real.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Palit debuts with an addictive grumpy sunshine romance starring a hero whose one-liners are worthy of a modern Mr. Darcy. Canadian Bengali Naomi Kelly grew up in a rural community with a mother who rejected everything Indian and a stepfather with no connection to her heritage. Now an adult, she feels culturally isolated and yearns for Bengali connection. She also desperately needs a contract as the brand consultant for a recently reopened Indian shop in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood. The store belongs to Dev Mukherjee's very traditional Bengali mother, whose other major project is finding Dev a wife—with no regard for his feelings on the matter. When Dev and Naomi meet, they see a solution to both their problems: Dev will be a cultural cheat sheet for Naomi as she works to impress his mom, while Naomi will keep potential brides away by pretending to be Dev's girlfriend. The result is an un-put-downable charmer brimming with serious themes of cultural identity, family estrangement, and the struggles of the first generation born to immigrant parents. As sparks fly and real feelings grow, readers will be unable to keep the smiles off their faces.