Incense and Sensibility

Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3)- Sonali Dev

HarperCollins

Release Date: July 6, 2021

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Yash Raje, California’s first Indian-American gubernatorial candidate, has always known exactly what he wants—and how to use his privileged background to get it. He attributes his success to a simple mantra: control your feelings and you can control the world. But when a hate crime at a rally critically injures his friend, Yash’s easy life suddenly feels like a lie, his control an illusion. When he tries to get back on the campaign trail, he blacks out with panic.

Desperate to keep Yash’s condition from leaking to the media, his family turns to the one person they trust—his sister’s best friend, India Dashwood, California’s foremost stress management coach. Raised by a family of yoga teachers, India has helped San Francisco’s high strung overachievers for a decade without so much as altering her breath. But this man—with his boundless ambition, simmering intensity, and absolute faith in his political beliefs—is like no other. 

Yash has spent a lifetime repressing everything to succeed, including their one magical night ten years ago—a too brief, too bright passion that if rekindled threatens to destroy the dream he’s willingly shouldered for his family and community . . . until now.

________________________________________________________________________

Sonali Dev has been introducing readers to the powerful Raje family of California through her Jane Austen-inspired series (Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors and Recipe for Persuasion) and in Incense and Sensibility we meet golden son Yash, California's first Indian-American gubernatorial candidate. The election is coming up and the entire Raje family is pulling out all the stops to support Yash's run.  But a hate crime at a rally hurts Yash and critically injures his friend and bodyguard Abdul, and suddenly Yash feels more out of control and helpless than he ever has before. Family friend India Dashwood is asked to help him deal with his stress, but there's a lot more going on than their families know. One magical night ten years ago, Yash and India met and instantly clicked. But Yash put aside what he wanted to form an alliance with family friend Naina, and now he's keeping secrets for others that are eating away at him- not good for helping reduce stress.  India doesn't know if she can help Yash without losing her heart again, but she's determined to try.

I absolutely fell in love with India and Yash, and Sonali Dev does a brilliant job here, bringing them to life and pulling the reader into the emotional turmoil of their journey. India is calm, centered, and self-assured, she believes in herself and is determined to handle every problem life throws at her family. She's strong and carries the burdens of being the responsible one in the family without coming across as a martyr. From the outside, Yash seems the same- strong, focused, confident, and ready to use his power and influence to fix the wrongs he sees in the world. But Yash has been physically and emotionally traumatized even before the rally shooting, and has finally hit the point of not being able to push it down and ignore his feelings anymore. The contrast between who Yash presents to the world and what he feels inside as he tries to deal with everything was written with empathy and sympathy, and complete believability. But what really caught me was the emotional pull between Yash and India, the magnetic and fantastic connection between them, the yearning to be together and all of the sensible and real-world reasons why it couldn't happen.  This wasn't the class disconnect or family obligations or "I'm not good enough" made up reasons that so many books use as the angst to separate lovers until the very end, but literally Yash as a person vs Yash as a politician. Which makes way more sense when you read the book and I won't spoil it by explaining further here. 

One of the problems a lot of adaptations of Austen novels have is trying to stay too closely to the original, making the contemporary story feel forced into a mold it can't work with. Incense and Sensibility is its own story and never makes the mistake of forcing in a plot point from Sense and Sensibility that doesn't work. But Austen fans will occasionally find themselves seeing a shadow of the original story or a character in ways that will make them smile without taking away from the originality of the characters and plot they are immersed in.

Some Jane Austen books are harder to adapt than others and Sense and Sensibility always seems to be particularly difficult. Even though it isn't my favorite of Austen's books, I keep reading modern adaptations, looking for a good one and being left disliking what I read. Until now. Incense and Sensibility blew away my expectations, captured my emotions and held me in thrall until long past the final page. A wonderful, colorful, and original story full of emotion and empathy, this book is a real winner.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review