Thought this was an interesting take on high society novels, and the way in which they held themselves was greatly reflected in the narrative tone.

not sure if I am right but this maybe an adaption of Emma.
Great book, though I did not feel much connection with the main character. Some things made me giggle but a fairly good story.

Comedy of Manners…
A comedy of manners in this sweet tale set against a polite society. Keenly observed with a deftly drawn cast. A warm hearted and entertaining tale with rich satirical undertones.

An adaptation of Emma...it took me a long time to read as it never kept me wanting to read more and there were very few characters that I liked. The link to Emma was clear but also the author's own twists which I appreciated.

Polite Society focuses on Ania, a bored rich person living in India. I didn't like her so struggled with this book.

Basically, this novel is Emma, against a backdrop of old money India. And that should have made it a better experience than it actually was for me.

Now, part of the problem (I'm sure) is that I know Emma - I remember reading it in an English Lit class when I was 14, and watching the movie adaptation (with Gwyneth Paltrow - it's great), and the TV mini-series, and I haven't even mentioned Clueless yet ... I know the story, and I know it well.

Unfortunately that means that, when reading Polite Society, I was constantly on the look-out for the next connection to the Jane Austen original, when in actual fact I wanted to enjoy Rao's original story instead.

The novel has a whole host of characters, from self-centred Ania, to her equally self-centred father Dileep, naive Dimple, academic Dev, media host Fahim, and mature socialites Serena and Nina. And the Austen connection meant that I was constantly trying to match these up with characters from the original novel.

In addition, I found none of the characters (except perhaps Dev), particularly redeeming - they were shallow in their approach to society, and shallow on paper too. There were just too many characters, with POVs that veered mid-paragraph, to feel any meaningful connection to any of them - so I was neither jeering or cheering when they were pulled down a peg or two.

Perhaps this was why none of the characters truly seemed to reach that unobtainable happy ending - in fact, the author seemed to betray all of the characters right at the end - hinting that all would not be well in the future.

The best moments came when the story veered from the Emma plot. I loved reading about Ania's time at the author's retreat, of each character's comeuppance and wished that, instead of being constrainted by that old story, Rao had been able to develop his own. There were glimmers of this, before it snapped back to Emma.

I enjoyed my time with this book. It's an ironic look at the rich and privileged Delhi society. We follow Ania who tries to do matchmaking within friends and family. This is reminiscent of Jane Austen's Emma.
It's an easy going and fun book to read. And I love having a peak into other cultures. So, if you're also like that, I'd . recommend this book.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

In this satire of ‘polite’ Delhi society, rich and spoilt Ania tries her hand at matchmaking her friends and family. With echoes of Jane Austen’s Emma, this interesting novel set in the bubble of South Delhi’s elite contains some witty observations and tender moments.

The majority of characters are conceited, concerned with nothing more than money, status and gossip. While there are some poignant scenes involving characters who are victims of the society their privilege enables them to inhabit, I generally didn’t feel much empathy for the characters. Despite this, I enjoyed the novel. The narrative style with its remarks and judgements of characters and society made for easy reading.

The setting of South Delhi with its mansions, swimming pools, and exclusive parties worked well with the plot and characters. While I didn’t find the ending very satisfying, it was effective at showing the pitfalls of ignorance and the excesses of privilege.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

Took me a while to get into this, as it was initially hard to warm to the characters and their life style but by the end I had enjoyed and was fully invested in Ania and her friends and family. In full disclosure I should say Emma is not my favourite Austen novel, so I was not immediately captivated. The witty descriptions of high society Indian life & the settings made it an interesting read and differentiated it from other Austen based novels. Thankyou to Tinder Press and Netgalley for providing me with this free ARC.

Take a blender and toss in a pinch of Crazy Rich Asians and a dollop of Jane Austen's Emma, blitz together and you'll be close to getting Polite Society by Mahesh Rao. This is a modern day retelling of Emma set in India , and it is a perfectly pleasant way to while away a few hours. The plot follows the original reasonably closely but with enough of a difference to keep things interesting, and without some of the extremely obvious similarities I have seen in other Austen retellings. The social commentary is still as sharp and on point, and the author has done a wonderful job with her version of the Emma character, spoiled socialite Ania Khurana, whose preoccupation with Instagram likes and selfie filters is certainly in keeping with the tone of the original. There are plenty of moments of genuine humor and the descriptive writing brings the exotic location to life vividly.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Mahesh Rao reinterprets Jane Austen's Emma in a novel set in Delhi in India. I should say that Emma is my least favourite in the Austen canon, Emma is not a character that I felt any affinity or appreciation for. In this version, perhaps it is not surprising that I was less than enamoured by the privileged and entitled 25 year old socialite, Ania Khurana, the only daughter and child of the super rich Dileep. With a mother who died when she was too young to remember, this no doubt contributed to her father spoiling her rotten. She is a slightly bored young woman, doing some 'good works' by volunteering, talking about the novel that she is writing, inflating her importance in the exclusive circles she inhabits, although in reality there is very little in the way of actual writing taking place. She plans to rectify this by attending a writing residency in Italy, it is so easy to use her family's influence to get a celebrated writer to recommend her for it.

In the meantime, she decides to dabble in a little matchmaking, beginning with her spinster aunt in her fifties, Renu. Upon meeting a Colonel Suraj Singh Rathore, she decides he is an eminently suitable man for her aunt, organising picnics for them to get to know each other. Feeling she has a gift in this area, she casts her eyes around to find her next target, choosing her newest friend, Dimple, sure she is poor, but that is no reason why she cannot get a man above her social strata. Dimple has other ideas as she fixes on Ankit, deemed by Ania to be unworthy of her dear friend as she lectures Dimple on not settling for such a lowly character. Ania has a much more appropriate man lined up for her, the famous Muslim journalist, Fahim. As Ania engages in her machinations, sometimes rather cruelly, she is to learn the hard way that she is not always right, as pointed by her long term family friend, archaeologist Dev Gahlot, and that she is not beyond making her own personal errors.

Rao updates Emma into the age of social media, where every scandal and gossip finds itself growing to mammoth proportions, the perfect tool for the young, rich, groomed, careless of others, and judgemental social circles with time on their hands, with their social etiquette and codes that it is impossible to know unless you are an insider. I think Austen's Emma would have taken to social media like a duck to water. I found this novel more engaging once Ania starts to understand she is capable of making big mistakes, and she feels an inner urge to earn the respect of Dev. Whilst I struggled with the story at the beginning, I did eventually begin to immerse myself in the life of the Indian Emma, a self obsessed Ania who has to handle what she experiences at the writing residency and other challenges. Many thanks to Headline for an ARC.