As a fellow South Asian, I was really excited to read this book! While I loved the food aspects of the plot and I loved watching Isha's journey, I think that more time could have been spent on the backstory as well as building the chemistry between Om and Isha since there wasn't really the romantic tension build up I was hoping for. Overall, it was a fun read but I think adding more context, making the dialogue a little less formal between the characters, and playing up the suspense/tension would make this novel even stronger.

The most glaring flaw with this story is the lack of a conflict. The plot is a series of events of a young, new wife in an arranged marriage building intimacy in her relationship with her husband, and becoming an Indian foodt4uck entrepreneur. While she feels insecure about these endeavors, no challenges present themselves to her. Opportunity after opportunity falls into her lap and all she needs to do is grab them. Her husband does all the heavy lifting in her relationship, without any growth or action taken by the main character for when disagreements do arise between them. I understand this book may be aiming for the cosy vibe, the lack of challenges is too extreme to maintain my interest.

Additionally, the dialogue of this book is very stilted and unatural. They speak like they are reading aloud from a textbook at times. Other times, they transition from angry and closed off to open and loving again without any transitional logic.

Some things I liked about this book was the sideplot of the main couple's friend's marriage - which had a more intense, emotional plot. I also thought the pacing of the romance was fairly decent when stepping back, even though I was very disappointed by the specifics of the writing, the storybeats, the lack of an intense conflict, the lack of transitions between emotions and the rare conflicts that do arise between the characters. I could not find this book on goodreads to leave my thoughts there.