Ｂｏｏｋ Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ
Sugar, Spice and Can't Play Nice is book 2 of Annika Sharma’s Chai Masala Club. It can be read as a stand-alone.
Payal and Ayaan know of each other through the Desi community. Both are from the UK but currently live in the United States. Payal recently quit her job to pursue her designing career full-time (thank goodness for her family paying her bills so she is able to do this). Ayaan is seen as the lazy screw-up in his family even though he has a thriving career of his own. He has commitment issues and just broke it off with his girlfriend. They are both on a dating app and end up hooking up for the night. Not knowing, they both get summoned back home to discuss a business merger - including Payal being “sold off” in an arranged marriage to Ayaan. They are unhappy about the transaction but end up using each other to get what they want.
I enjoyed this book. I wish I had paid attention to this being part of the series (especially when I own book 1 but haven’t read it yet). I love all of the supporting characters. The story is well written with great character development but at times it does seem to drag on with lots of repetitive or unnecessary parts. It definitely could have been shorter. At first, I really disliked Ayaan but he really got under my skin and turned out to be such a sweetheart. His family couldn’t be more wrong about him!
I will be going back to read the first book and I look forward to reading the rest of the series!
Ⓦⓗⓐⓣ Ⓘ Ⓛⓞⓥⓔⓓ:
✨️The closeness of her friends
✨️All of the cultural references, traditions, etc
✨Payal’s clothing designs & fashion show
✨Ayaan was loyal and supportive of Payal (even from the background)
✨Nani - she was just amazing!
✨The bond Ayaan has with his sister-in-law
Ⓦⓗⓐⓣ Ⓘ Ⓓⓘⓓⓝ’ⓣ
✨️How PayPal was "sold off"
✨The "break-up" - they were both using each other. It was just so silly
✨️Longer than it needed to be (lots of repetitiveness)
𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝔹𝕠𝕠𝕜 ℍ𝕒𝕤:
Enemies to Lovers
Arranged Marriage
Family Drama
One Night Stand
Fake Engagement
Found Family
Lots of Banter
South Asian Rep
Dual POV
Thank you to @netgalley, @sourcebookcasablanca or the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.