This guest review is from Aarya Marsden.

Aarya Marsden is a pseudonym for an Indian-American college student and long-time romance reader. Her favorite authors include Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, Lucy Parker, Kresley Cole, Alisha Rai, Lisa Kleypas, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Meredith Duran, Mina V. Esguerra, Kate Clayborn, and many more.

You can follow @Aarya_Marsden on Twitter, where she gushes about romance novels and laments about her senior honors thesis.

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It took me an entire day to formulate my thoughts on this book because I was extremely conflicted. Prior to reading it, I was excited to receive an ARC because

1. there aren’t that many South Asian-authored romance novels
2. I am Indian-American and it’s important to give desi readers a chance to review desi books.

After reading it, I was torn: I loved the Punjabi representation but had serious issues with the romantic relationship.

The Hero: Hemdeep Singh is the oldest of three sons in a Punjabi-American family. His father, Deepak Singh, immigrated to the United States and founded the successful tech company Bharat, Inc. Middle son Ajay is in line for the CEO position, youngest son Zail is in R&D, and oldest son Hem left the company after falling out with his family.

The reason for the estrangement is two-fold:

1. Hem was angry that his father let the company go public (against his advice)
2. Hem partially blamed his parents for scaring away his ex-girlfriend Lisa after they became overly-enthusiastic about marriage despite the couple not being ready for that stage (e.g., they pushed wedding venues and save-the-date cards).

Despite the family rift, Hem returns home when his family is faced with a crisis: the company received an offer of purchase from WTA Digital and the board commissioned a compensation committee to investigate the offer/assess if the offered valuation is equivalent to the actual value of the company. At the end of their investigation, the committee will make a recommendation to the Bharat, Inc. board on whether they should accept the offer or not.

Hem and his brothers are furious at this takeover attempt. As if this isn’t bad enough, Deepak suffers a heart attack and the brothers are worried that the board may accept the offer because the company hasn’t been meeting its sales targets.

The Heroine: Mina Kohli is a badass lawyer. If you are unlucky enough to be facing her on the opposite side of a case, you should be quaking in your boots. Her mom was a successful lawyer but she died in a car crash after Mina’s Asshole Uncles ousted her mom from the family law firm. Mina is very protective of her mother’s legacy – the law firm – and is determined to get the equity partner position.

Unfortunately for her, her Asshole Uncles (yes, I will continue to refer to them in this manner for the rest of this review) will only make her partner under one condition: that Mina agree to an arranged marriage with the heir of another successful Indian-American law firm in the hopes that the two law firms can merge. Mina is unenthusiastic, but hasn’t yet outright declined.

Then, her uncle Sanjeev (who is on the board of directors at Bharat, Inc.) offers a new proposition: if Mina agrees to be part of the compensation committee and make a recommendation to okay WTA’s takeover, then he’ll make her partner. Mina is appalled at this unethical and illegal request but pretends to calmly agree. She suspects that Sanjeev has an illicit reason to want the takeover, and wants the opportunity to investigate the company and find evidence of his misdeeds.

You can guess what happens next: Hem and Mina meet, investigate the company, fall in love, and then save Bharat, Inc. from the takeover! And of course, because it’s a romance novel, the relationship ends happily ever after.

WHAT I LIKED:

1) The desi representation makes me squeal with joy.

I’m not Punjabi or Sikh, but I can tell how much heart and soul Nisha Sharma poured into this book. It’s so important for non-white authors to get the opportunity to write about their own culture.

Here’s a list of things that resonated with me:

• How devoted Hem and his brothers are to the Sikh religion, including the fact that they all wear their kara bracelet.
• Hem’s mom is hilarious. She gets all the funny one-liners. I want her book!

“Christ, Mom—”

She slammed the rolling pin onto the counter. “We didn’t send you to religious studies at the gurdwara for years so you can come in here saying ‘Christ’ or ‘Jesus!’ Show some respect, Hem.”

• I appreciate that his parents aren’t villainized for their part in driving Lisa away. What they do is unacceptable, but it is also normal (I have relatives who do the same thing despite repeated pleas to stop). So I like that the book implied their behavior is wrong but also not entirely evil – it came from a place of love and concern.They also don’t change their marriage obsession by the end of the book. It just makes me laugh because expecting Indian parents to stop nagging their kids about marriage is like expecting pigs to fly.
• It’s sweet that the family mansion/compound area in New Jersey has separate bungalows for all three sons, with the expectation that the sons will live there with their future families. The idea may seem strange to Western families, but it’s very traditional for different generations of Indian families to live together.
• I love how even though everyone works in NYC, they actually live in NJ because of course they do! That’s where all the Indians live! And it’s 100% accurate that the best Indian food in the tri-state area is in Edison, NJ as opposed to NYC.
• The food! I’ve read other Indian novels where delicious food is mentioned, but it’s especially wonderful here.

She added mango pickle, a tab of fresh butter, and two heaps of homemade dahi. The yogurt was tart and cool, the mango pickle fragrant and tangy.

And

They went to the back of the restaurant and ordered paper dosas, sambaar, and coconut chutney at the counter and then sat at a small table in the corner.

If you don’t know why I’m so excited, it’s because these aren’t foods that get much attention in the U.S. Mango pickle with dahi (I call dahi “thayir” but both words mean yogurt – thayir is just the Tamil word) is one of those comfort foods you eat at home. You don’t often eat it at restaurants. In my family, the most basic and comforting meal you can eat is thayir sadaam (yogurt rice) with a large portion of mango pickle. When that’s not the main meal, we’ll add thayir and pickles in a separate cup to eat as a snack. It’s acidic, sour, and delicious.

I am also excited by the dosa because it’s South Indian. I wasn’t expecting to see it because both protagonists are Punjabi. Paper dosa is a type of dosa usually only ordered in restaurants (it’s a bitch to make it at home and my mom refuses to do it, preferring to only make the smaller/fluffier kind). It’s extremely thin, crisp, and the perfect food to dip into coconut chutney and sambar (a spicy mix of lentils and vegetables. Google an image, because words can’t do it justice. Actually, not even an image can do it justice. Go to a dosa place and order it!).

2) I also love Mina. She’s a badass and gives no shit as to what others think about her. At one point, her uncle forces her to keep her shoes on for a dinner party (it’s normally weird to wear shoes inside the house) and she refuses to change out of her heels.

“If this so-called wealthy family and you want shoes in the house, I’ll wear them to make everyone feel comfortable. But no one, even you, will tell me what kind of shoes I can wear.”

“Are you trying to embarrass them?”

“No, of course not. It is, of course, fun to watch grown adults feel inferior to a tall woman with Louboutins.”

She is also the entire brains of the operation. She’s excellent at manipulating conversations to go her way. She pulls a stunt so excellent that I wanted to jump up and cheer. Mina is wonderful.

And now, on to the hard part.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

1) Not surprisingly, the most important thing in a romance novel is the romance. I don’t mind insta-lust as much as some readers do, and there was serious insta-lust here (instant attraction upon sight). What I do have a problem with is when a romance is premised on the fact that the heroine is not like the ex-girlfriend.

Some background: Hem is deeply scarred by his ex-relationship with Lisa (who is white). In addition to the drama with his parents, they had other problems in their relationship. Hem feels that Lisa was ashamed of his background by asking him not to put their relationship on display.

Mina remembered the comment he’d made when they’d been in his apartment last weekend about Lisa’s aversion to a T-shirt as a gift. “What about the clothes thing?”

“Pet peeve, I guess. It used to drive me nuts that I couldn’t buy things for her to wear. Jewelry. Clothes. Anything. I loved the idea of seeing her enjoy something that I gave her, something that would make her feel as pretty as I thought she was. Instead, she refused to wear or accept anything I gave her except for the occasional birthday gift. A person is allowed to have boundaries. That wasn’t the part that bothered me so much. It’s why she had those boundaries in the first place. She said that it’s better if our relationship wasn’t on display. I never truly understood why she cared so much if people knew we were dating. The pride in me assumed she was embarrassed to be seen with a Sikh man.”

Yikes. If Mina was dating someone, she’d want everyone to know how happy she was. As for the gifts, Hem was right. A person could have boundaries, and as long as she wasn’t obligated to wear anything a man bought her, she’d be happy with whatever present she received.

I really, really dislike the Evil Ex trope. It’s okay for Hem to have had a disastrous ex-relationship and talk about why the relationship didn’t work to Mina. I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is this:

Lisa is mentioned constantly. Hem argues with his parents about her, he thinks about her despairingly as a reason why he can’t introduce Mina to his parents (he’s worried about them scaring her off), he brings her up to Mina all the time, he thinks about how great Mina is when she does something (which is usually something that Lisa wouldn’t do), and his brothers praise Mina by pointing out how she’s a much better fit for Hem than Lisa.

Lisa is even how Hem comes to the realization that he loves Mina:

“What makes you think Mina is more accepting than my ex?”

“Are you serious? Like Lisa, Mina didn’t have the same upbringing we did, but she understands you, and that’s what makes her different.”

Hem had spent so long repressing memories of his ex-girlfriend that now, when he recalled some of the complaints she’d had, he had to agree that Mina would never say the same things.

Things are moving too fast.

Do normal people even have multi-day flashy weddings?

Who lives with their parents at our age?

I can’t do this anymore, Hem. I can’t be your girlfriend and share you with your parents, your brothers and your religion anymore.

You’re making a big mistake. How could you even think about leaving Bharat?

Hem realized that his intelligent, witty, Punjabi queen didn’t judge him like that.

She was the one. Mina Kaur Kohli was the girl for him because she accepted him for who he was. She saw possibilities with him, and she made him laugh. She should’ve been the first woman he’d introduced to his parents. He couldn’t change the past, but he had every intention of keeping her in his future.

Let’s break this down. I don’t have a problem that Lisa, a white woman, found it difficult to accept Hem’s culture and family. These are valid and realistic reasons for Hem to break up with someone. I have a problem with the repetitive mentions of Lisa and the constant description of Mina as the anti-Lisa.

Mina is a badass lawyer. Her worth as “Hem’s True Love” shouldn’t be explained to the reader because she is the antithesis of another woman. Lisa doesn’t like Hem buying her clothes/jewelry/lingerie; Mina does. Lisa doesn’t understand Hem’s commitment to his religion and kara; Mina does. Lisa doesn’t understand Hem’s dreams and goals; Mina does. It goes on and on and on.

Here is my question: why can’t Mina do all these things (wanting Hem to buy her things, supporting Hem’s dreams, understanding Hem’s religion/culture) without the narrative choice to remind the reader that Lisa didn’t do these things? Mina is wonderful and deserves to be so much more than “Lisa’s Polar Opposite.”

I realize that some readers may not have a problem with an ex-relationship informing the protagonist’s fears for the current relationship. I have mixed opinions – sometimes it’s done well and sometimes it veers too much into the Evil Ex trope. I prefer for the conflict to be focused on the present relationship, not a past one. I don’t think The Takeover Effect would bother me as much if the above passage was absent.

There’s a point in every romance novel when a lightbulb goes off in the protagonist’s head and they think, “That’s it. This person is the one for me and I want to spend the rest of my life with them.” The Realization of Love is often my favorite moment in the book because everything changes after that – emotions become more intense and all bets are off. It is infuriating that Hem’s Realization of Love occurs because Mina is described as Lisa’s anthesis.

2) The conflict-of-interest bothers me a little. It is unprofessional for Mina, a member of the compensation committee, to form a romantic attachment to Hem while she’s investigating the company. I understand that Mina has to be unprofessional in order for the romance to happen (and love makes fools of us all), but she’s so smart in every other avenue of her career that I am a little incredulous that she capitulated to Hem’s overtures (she does recognize the issues but only half-heartedly protests). This is only a minor issue, but it highlights a larger absence in the story: scenes wherein Mina is doing her job.

Mina is investigating the company to assess its true value. We don’t see her working on this with the other committee members (I assume they exist but they are never mentioned). We see her in the company HQ in the original board meeting with Hem, but there’s never any description of what she does to review the offer. The reader is told that she’s compiling a due diligence report over several weeks, but I would’ve liked to see more of Mina working in a professional capacity.

There is a work-related scene in the second half of the book where she interviews an employee in R&D, but the only reason that scene is included is because it helps Mina discover a conspiracy. Mina does have some excellent showdowns against her Asshole Uncles, but that’s still not the same thing as seeing Mina perform her primary legal task.

At one point, Mina muses that due diligence reports normally take months to compile and that she only has a few weeks because of the WTA Digital deadline. Fine. I can stretch my suspension of disbelief to allow that this can be done in a few weeks. But that would mean she’d be living and breathing her job. We never see that or watch her interact with other committee members. The weeks pass by and the narrative focuses on her life outside of her day job: she goes out to dinner with her best friend and gets drunk, she goes to a dosa place with Hem, she has a dinner party with her uncles, etc. The takeover attempt is discussed on these occasions, but that’s still not the same thing as understanding Mina’s primary task.

Considering a major obstacle to her relationship with Hem is her committee role, the reader doesn’t have a chance to fully appreciate the conflict-of-interest because we don’t actually see Mina working on the due diligence report. I don’t even know what a due diligence report entails!

3) My next issue is subjective and varies from reader to reader. The author’s writing style and descriptions do not work for me. Some sections feel unnecessarily expository, some sentences are awkwardly phrased, and some descriptions make me roll my eyes.

Mina’s dream-girl eyes widened when Hem squeezed her palm.

I just don’t like over-the-top descriptions like this. “Mina’s dream-girl eyes.” “Her perfect mouth.” “They flipped bleached hair and pouted glossy lips.” It’s a personal preference, however, so I understand that other readers may enjoy this style of writing.

4) My final comment is not a criticism of the book and does not affect my rating.

Mina motioned for someone else to enter, and a petite Asian woman walked in, wearing a suit and a riot of tight curls around her face.

I am a first generation Indian-American. When I glimpse someone on the street, I don’t think, “Oh, that’s an Asian person.” I think, “That person looks like an East Asian, possibly of Chinese or Japanese descent.” It is difficult to identify exact nationalities, but I believe most people (even westerners unfamiliar with Asia) can tell the difference between South Asians and East Asians. I also realize that for some Americans, they do think “That’s an Asian person” when they see a Chinese person across the street.

However true this is in real life, I still have issues whenever I see a character simply described as “Asian” as a marker of physical description. Asia is the most populous continent with 4.5 billion inhabitants. It includes people from the Indian subcontinent to the edge of Russia to the South China Sea. There are thousands and thousands of cultures and languages. Skin color ranges from extremely pale to nearly black. Describing any character as just “Asian,” even in a minor character, is a disservice to the diversity of those traditions.

While describing physical features, “Asian” has become a shorthand for “East Asian” (usually someone with lighter skin and looks like they have ancestry in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, etc). Not even all East Asians have light skin!

This shorthand is definitely true in the United States. Most people don’t mean South Asian or people with dark brown skin when they describe a person as “Asian.” I hate this. I don’t expect people to tell apart nationalities, but it’s frustrating that the dominant prototype image of “Asian” is someone that doesn’t look like me.

Asia is a continent, not a physical description. If a character is East Asian, say East Asian. If a character is South Asian, say South Asian. Those categories are still extremely broad and contain a diverse range of physical features and cultures, but at least it’s not as useless as “Asian.” Nationality descriptors are even better.

In this book, I am jarred that a South Asian protagonist (in the above quote, Hem) describes an extremely minor character, Josette Hu, as “Asian.” It makes no sense – he’s Asian! He’s a Punjabi-American! In other scenes, he describes other South Asians as South Asians (and often with more detail)! Why would he describe an East Asian woman as “Asian” in his head?

I realize that this is, quite literally, a throwaway line. I doubt the line was written with bad intentions. But it bothers me. I don’t want the “Asian = East Asian” physical description shorthand to become so pervasive that even South Asians internalize the prototype. It’s possible that I’m too sensitive about this issue (maybe I am! Call me out if you think so!), but it is how I feel.

In summary: I was really excited by the desi rep in The Takeover Effect, but the execution of the romance didn’t work for me. Unfortunately, the parts that gave me pause overwhelmed my enthusiasm. If readers are looking for a desi #ownvoices story and none of my criticisms are deal-breakers, then you may enjoy this book. Even though the Evil Ex trope will likely not be present in the sequel, I probably won’t read Ajay’s book because I had issues with the writing style.