B
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Enemies to Lovers, Forced Proximity
Archetype: Diverse Protagonists
Jasmine and Jake Rock the Boat is a stand-alone contemporary romance by the author of A Holly Jolly Diwali, which Elyse reviewed. Holly Jolly Diwali introduced Niki Randhawa, a young woman who had spent her life trying to be the perfect daughter. Jasmine and Jake rock the Boat puts the focus on Jasmine, Niki’s wild sister, who sees herself as a constant disappointment to her parents. I read Jasmine and Jake without having read Holly Jolly first, and it worked just fine.
Jasmine is Punjabi-American. She horrified her parents by moving in with a boyfriend, Brian. Now she and Brian have broken up, a break up which is complicated by their shared custody of a dog. Jasmine is angry and resentful about having never gotten her parent’s approval and being condemned all through her teens and twenties for doing “normal” things like dating. When her parents invite only her perfect sister Niki to go with them on an Alaska cruise, Jasmine is hurt by their exclusion, and she impulsively invites herself along.
Little does Jasmine realize that this is a seniors cruise, and she will be surrounded by the same generation of Aunties and Uncles that found her so scandalous in the past. There is one other person around her age on the boat – Jake, who annoys Jasmine instantly with his picture-perfect Instagram account and his cultural male privilege. During the cruise, Jasmine grows closer to her parents and to Jake while she tries to figure out who she really wants to be.
This is a romance/coming of age story which is told entirely from Jasmine’s point of view and has as much focus on her gaining a new sense of self and emotional maturity as it has on her romance with Jake. While there are some very passionate make-out scenes, the actual sex is fade-to-black. There’s a lot of humor, some scenery, music, food, and fun along with Jasmine’s considerable, and justifiable, anger and sadness over being the family’s “bad girl.” Jasmine has to face her own mistakes and learn to see her parents as people before she can heal, and her parents have to change their own attitudes about her if they want to have a happy relationship.
Sometimes in a book like this, the guy is kind of a blank slate, but Jake gets a lot of his own character development and is a complex, interesting person. I would have liked to have had chapters from his perspective, because I enjoyed the way he subverted a lot of Jasmine’s expectations and the way he used people’s prejudices and assumptions against them. Once Jasmine and Jake settle their dynamic down a bit, he proves to be a good communicator who respects boundaries and struggles with his own insecurities. Jasmine and Jake each express both deep appreciation for their family and culture, and frustration with their sometimes tightly circumscribed roles within their immediate and extended families.
I struggled to make sense of Jasmine for a lot of this book. She is wildly inconsistent in her behavior towards Jake for at least the first third of the novel, which frustrated me no end. She has a tendency to veer between polite conversation, gentle banter, and some really mean, judgemental comments. If I were Jake, this would have been a very short book. For her part, Jasmine thinks Jake is inconsistent in his approach to her, but I didn’t pick up on that as much as she does. That discrepancy, plus the overall I-like-you-but-I-don’t-but-I-do dynamic irritated me so much.
Taken as a whole, however, I liked Jasmine’s character development and found it believable. Seeing how her relationship with her parents evolves is as interesting and satisfying, if not more so, than her relationship with Jake. Both involve a lot of two-steps-forward, one-step-back, and that can be difficult to read, but it’s also how people tend to change in real life. For most of us, there’s nothing linear about maturing, and a lot of Jasmine’s inconsistent behavior with Jake makes more sense as the book progresses and her emotional baggage and defensive nature is explained.
While there’s a lot happening in this novel (Alaska is pretty, Jasmine and Jake organize a dance contest, Jasmine and Brian work out their dog issues, etc) this book lives or dies based on how the reader feels about Jasmine. It took me a long time to warm up to her, and frankly I still don’t understand why she and Jake kept talking to each other after their first meeting other than forced proximity, but the depth of her feelings of rejection resonated with me and got me to stick things out with her.
In the end, I was glad I did. Jasmine isn’t always an easy person to spend time with, but her growth is believable and enjoyable, and I ended up believing in her HEA with Jake. I was especially proud of her for not regretting many of her past decisions. Even though she wants to do things differently now in many aspects of her life including romance, she still appreciates the relationships and lifestyle that she had in the past, and I think that’s pretty awesome.
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Went a little higher on this one with a B+ – I liked them both, even though Jasmine could indeed be a Chore.
You lasted longer than i did. I DNF’d shortly after Jasmine met Jake (a scene so cringey i had to skim it). I understand that Jasmine had to start out pretty immature in order to have her growth arc, but in addition to being rude to Jake, she was too difficult to root for, for me. Her boy-craziness would have made more sense as a 13-year-old, not 33. She hasn’t even figured out a long-term place to live post-breakup, and her reaction to most of her life setbacks is to look for a hot guy to hook up with. I couldn’t get behind it.