For some reason, I really enjoy reading (and watching) things set in Indian culture. It all started when I dated a Punjabi guy many years ago and I started reading Indian authors. I’m by no means an expert on Indian culture (or, cultures, as it’s a very big and diverse country), but it’s all interesting. I also have a certain amused appreciation for Bollywood, even though it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything.

When I was first reading Indian authors, I preferred high-brow, literary fiction, but now I generally stick to romance and YA. I was looking for some more diverse romance and stumbled across Dev and read her second book, The Bollywood Bride, first. I quite liked that one. I liked this one less well, because I couldn’t really appreciate the hero, although I liked the heroine, even though she couldn’t be more different from me. Most of A Bollywood Affair is set in the U.S. (Michigan, specifically), yet it’s a story about Indians rather than Indian-Americans.

Mili is twenty-four and she’s technically been married since she was four, when she she and a twelve-year-old boy named Virat were forced to marry by their very traditional grandfathers. The groom and his family soon left Mili’s village and haven’t returned. Mili is no feminist—she’s dutifully been waiting for her husband to return so she can start her wifely responsibilities. She’s afraid that the reason he hasn’t returned to her is because she isn’t good enough, so she’s always trying to improve. Her situation isn’t great—she and her grandmother don’t have much money. However, and a little ironically, being married gives Mili a little more freedom compared to the other girls in her village. So her grandmother allows her to go to America to study. This should make her an even better, modern Indian wife, right?

This all makes Samir Mili’s brother-in-law, even though he and Virat had both totally forgotten about the marriage until she reminded them with her first communication—a letter pointing out that she took care of their grandparents until they died, as were her daughter-in-law responsibilities in “our great culture,” as she puts it. She also says that it’s time for her to start taking care of him, too. And that she’s been caring for Virat’s ancestral home since his grandfather’s death, but now she needs money to pay for the more serious repairs it needs. This enrages the brothers because they think she’s some type of gold-digger.

Samir and Virat didn’t think the ceremony their grandfather had forced them into was truly real. In fact, Virat has been planning to marry his now-pregnant long-term girlfriend. So he needs a divorce from Mili. Then he’s in an accident and things look particularly dire, because now he’s in a coma and can’t pursue the divorce himself. Nobody wants the child to be a bastard—horrors. So Samir steps up to convince Mili to sign for the divorce from his brother.

By this time, she’s already in Michigan, so off Samir goes. Oh, and by the way—Samir happens to be a very well-known Bollywood director. Samir deceives her when he reaches Michigan. She knows he is the famous director, but she doesn’t know he’s Virat’s brother. But he ends up taking care of her after she breaks her ankle, so she thinks he’s a great guy.

So, as I mentioned, I do have some issues with the book. Samir is actually a big douche. He has a troubled past so we’re supposed to forgive him that and believe in his redemption at the end. But he doesn’t respect women, getting all pissy when they “inevitably” fall in love with him. So this is troubling. Mili is likable though, even if her innocence and devotion to a missing husband are kind of sickening at times. She grows a little, but not as much as I’d like. I wanted her to see how limiting the traditional view is and at least be glad she’s going to be able to escape that.

Despite these reservations, I still enjoyed the book. It is believable that Samir’s fallen in love with her and he does sort of face his past. Maybe he’s really changed. So if you’re looking for something a bit different from the vast majority of romances out there, check this one out. I wouldn’t recommend the book if you can’t read rake heroes, though.

I really enjoyed this book. I adored the heroine, a super-smart nerdy woman who had a ways to go in the self-confidence department at the beginning.

Charlie Forrester is a Portland, Oregon-based data scientist, with a BS in computer science, a MS in psychology, and a PhD in something impressive (I’ve forgotten exactly). But since this isn’t a cover letter for a job application, I won’t worry about getting it exactly right. Suffice it to say that she’s a self-described geek who’s earned the title by digging into data and analyzing it. She created a matchmaking system that crawls men’s social media and general web presence to identify the relationship stage they’re ready for and then matches them with women who are looking for someone. It’s a computer program that came out of her PhD dissertation and she calls it Studies in Predictive Mating Behaviors Predicated on Social Media and Online Interaction, but her friends—to her chagrin—call it the Love Program.

Daniel Shawn is an investigative journalist who was burned while trying to expose a con artist impersonating a matchmaker. He ended up falling for the con himself, resulting in a career-stalling public outing. His reputation ruined, he’s returned to Portland to take a crummy job at a small tech journal—the only one that will hire him, apparently. Daniel’s scholarly achievements are in fine contrast to Charlie’s, too—he’s obviously smart enough, but he was a total failure in high school and (I think) may not have even gone to college.

Perhaps more importantly, Daniel is a childhood friend of Charlie’s who ditched her in high school, and she’s hated him since then. She even created a system called the Global Prick Positioning System to track him. Daniel is of course oblivious to the damage he caused. He doesn’t know why they lost contact, thinking it was just a thing that just happened naturally. Friends grow apart and so on. When they run into each other after he returns to Portland and meets up with his old friend Philip, who also happens to be one of the men in Charlie’s “data pool”, Charlie can’t believe it. She’s freaked out and decides to just avoid him even though he’s interested in rekindling their friendship.

In actuality, he’s interested in far more than friendship, but she doesn’t realize it. When weird circumstances make her accept a date from him, she thinks he’s just “boob stupid” because her friends make her dress at least a little provocatively, rather than in her normal hoodie and jeans. He is a little, but he also remembers always caring about her, all the way back when he was a kid. Because of Charlie’s situation, they continue to date, with her thinking it’s fake even though she’s starting to forgive him for his teenage transgressions. Daniel’s being genuine the whole time, so the black moment comes when he finds out why she went out with him in the first place. Happily, everything works out. Phew.

As I mentioned, I loved Charlie for being so different from a lot of romance heroines. It’s great when we see women who are accomplished on their own and don’t really need a man (and who don’t end up doing all the stupid compromising). Because Charlie doesn’t need a man, even though she finds that she wants Daniel, after all. And Daniel is a very likable guy, too. He’s always loved that Charlie is smart and geeky and admires her for it. You feel bad for him being a bit of a chump on his last assignment and the irony that he’s sort of fallen for something similar with Charlie makes you worry about how he’s going to react when he finds out. But this time it’s because of their background, not his own naivety.

The only thing that disappointed me a little with the book was that the secondary characters weren’t developed as much as they could have been (though there was a good range of characters peopling the story). Oh, and it was a little short—I wanted more of Charlie and Daniel.

Anyway, if you want to read a book that’s about a smart woman who really knows her stuff (and Charlie does because the author does—she works in the field), I can’t recommend this book enough.

I almost literally devoured this book, an impressive debut. I had trouble putting it down (which I did only twice, for sleep). Told entirely from the heroine’s perspective in first person, it’s funny because her voice is great—it’s sort of smart silly. “I’m naked and putting on clothes, separated from Joshua by only a wall. I love you, wall. What a good wall.” Although obviously I knew they’d get together at the end, I was still desperate to see it happen.

Lucy Hutton is a small, bubbly, and quirky people-pleaser. Joshua Templeman is a tall, unfriendly, and slightly broody grump. They work side-by-side in a publisher’s office after a merger, each coming from one of the merged companies, and they despise each other, which gets expressed through their many passive-aggressive games. I’m not a big fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope because I often find it hard to forgive all the things that were done and said when they were still in the enemies stage. But I think Thorne was pretty careful to make the things neither over-the-top nor unforgivable. Joshua does say some mean things, but I think he doesn’t realize how personally she takes it. Basically, he’s lashing out because he’s mad at her for being so attractive to him.

Lucy and Josh are both really well-drawn as characters. Lucy is spelled out a little better because it’s all her point of view. She’s very lonely and not sure she’s doing the right thing with her life even though she cares tremendously about her job. She works hard and nobody can doubt her dedication. When the opportunity for a new role that would be a promotion comes up and she and Josh will be competing for it, her boss thinks she should get it—and so do we. As she prepares the application and continues her games with Josh, we get to see her grow and learn what she really wants out of life. It isn’t obvious in the beginning what Josh’s deal is, but we learn as the book progresses about his history and kind of understand why he’s a grump. The chemistry between them is palpable and there’s loads of sexual tension all over the place. “He smoothes down the T-shirt. My eyes slither along behind his hand. I want to scrunch up that T-shirt into a bowl and eat it with a dessert spoon.” It’s such a relief when they finally do get together.

On to a few other aspects of the book. Their banter is great—clever and flirty at times. The games themselves are funny. The setting of the office will be familiar to a lot of readers and everyone who’s worked in one will appreciate the antics of the workplace. And the company morale event is great.

I do feel obligated to mention that as much as I loved the book, it wasn’t perfect. For one, the size differential between Lucy and Josh is a little cliche, isn’t it? The book is sort of interestingly set… nowhere. It’s impossible to know where it takes place—I kind of guessed it was in Australia because that’s where the author is based, but it didn’t feel particularly Australian. This didn’t bother me a lot but some readers who care about setting will probably be irritated. I was also a little disappointed by how Josh solved their main problem all on his own without consulting Lucy at all. Finally, I wanted in Josh’s head sometimes, so it was kind of a bummer to have only Lucy’s POV.

But these little nit-picks didn’t keep me from enjoying it immensely. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for Thorne’s next book.