Sunshine and Spice

Finished November 15

Sunshine and Spice by Aurora Palit

This romance is set in Kelowna. We see the story from two points of view, the main female character Naomi Kelly and the main male character Dev Mukherjee. Naomi has her own brand consulting business, one she started after working in a larger corporate firm for several years. I wasn't familiar with this business, but it seems to cover a lot more than I would have thought. She proposes a reuse or redesign for space, and works with a construction contractor to bring it to life. It seems to involve a lot of elements of interior design. The story opens with her preparing for a bid on a job, the redesign of what has been for many years a bazaar run by an Indian family, carrying a wide variety of merchandise and rather cluttered at the moment. The owner lost her husband a few months ago and is now ready to face moving forward. 

Dev is the owner's son, who has recently moved back home from Penticton. He hasn't told his mother that he resigned from his job as a corporate accountant to pursue a different dream of his own. But his mother uses his presence to move forward with a different plan, finding him a wife. She hires a matchmaker looking for an Indian bride. She doesn't mind if the woman isn't Bengali, but Indian culture and its practices and traditions is important to her. 

Naomi is Indian, but hasn't been brought up in the culture. Her parents relationship wasn't approved of, and the young couple moved away. Her father moved on when she was just a toddler, and her mother married a local man in the Alberta town they lived in. Naomi is very close to her stepfather, sharing a love of sports with him. She isn't as close to her mother, who is into yoga and meditation and changes her other interests regularly. She has had no contact with her father or other relatives.

When Naomi's plan to remake the space as a family-run café is approved, and she and Dev run into each other while he is trying to escape a meeting with a potential wife, the two decide to help each other. Dev will help her on cultural aspects of the design and introduce her to Indian culture locally. She will pretend to be his girlfriend when they encounter any potential wives. Dev hopes to outlast his mother's plans. 

As they spend time together, they grow closer, but there are still barriers with Naomi's upbringing and Dev's family.

I enjoyed learning more about Indian culture and Naomi's business work, and I liked the plot. Dev definitely needed to grow a bit more backbone when it comes to his family, and Naomi needs to feel less insecure about her cultural knowledge. I liked the Canadian setting and reading a new author.