A South Asian spin on Jane Austen

Sonali Dev's series of rom-coms featuring the rich, gorgeous Raje family proves the staying power of a great storyteller.

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Jane Austen, 1873, Portrait Gallery of the Perry–Castañeda Library of the University of Texas at Austin. Public domain image.

I don’t remember exactly when I fell under the spell of Jane Austen. But once I did, I discovered the delightful subgenre of Austen-inspired literature, including but definitely not limited to Ibi Zoboi’s “Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix,” featuring teens of color in contemporary Brooklyn; P.D. James’ “Death Comes to Pemberley,” a murder mystery set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage; Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” a gory and goofy tribute in which Elizabeth and Darcy defend the village of Meryton against the undead; and Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Jane Austen Book Club,” in which members of a book club reading Austen’s novels have their own romantic escapades.

So when I spotted two of Sonali Dev’s four Austen-inspired romances featuring Indian American protagonists in modern-day California, I grabbed them off their library shelf. Then I promptly requested the other two and read those, too.

Dev, a longtime Austenite, has brought her own set of deft social observations and her own wry sense of humor to this series. She’s also done two things that I really liked:

• While incorporating characters and key elements from Austen’s four most popular novels, she’s linked her books through the rich, gorgeous and overachieving Rajes, featuring a different family member’s love story in each one.

• She’s written stories that are about much more than exciting romance. They also delve deeply into family and relationships in general. Where the parents of Austen’s star-crossed lovers are either one-dimensional (often unsympathetically so) or simply absent, Dev makes her characters’ parents complicated beings who have their own issues to resolve.

The first Raje we meet, in “Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors,” is Trisha Raje, who’s celebrated as a neurosurgeon for her boldness and spurned by her family for a long-ago betrayal of her brother. During an attempt to atone for her sin, Trisha — our Darcy character — has an unfortunate encounter with a gifted chef catering a family party, whom she dismisses within his hearing as “the help.” Though his pride is quite wounded, he happens to have a sister with a lethal brain condition that only Trisha is willing to treat. While the two reluctantly work their way to a detente, a young female version of Wickham comes back into Trisha’s life. Warning: If you like Indian food, this book will make you literally drool.

The food theme continues (rather mercilessly for hungry readers) in “Recipe for Persuasion,” featuring restaurateur Ashna Raje, a cousin of Trisha’s who was more or less raised by Trisha’s parents. Ashna inherited her late father’s restaurant but, after having been swindled by a couple of employees, has had trouble keeping it going. Desperate for a cash infusion, she decides to go on a reality show, Cooking With the Stars. Meanwhile, the man whose heart she broke back in high school is watching his best friend prepare to marry and wondering whatever happened to Ashna. When he finds out about Cooking With the Stars, he uses his fame as a soccer star to wheedle his way onto the show — as her partner.

The spotlight shifts to Trish’s brother Yash, who embodies the family’s hopes and ambitions, in “Incense and Sensibility.” He’s running for governor of California and the voters adore him — except for one racist who turns up at a campaign rally with a gun. Yash’s bodyguard saves him but ends up in the hospital in critical condition. Yash begins having panic attacks, which the Rajes decide must be concealed. Their solution: Send him to a yoga guru and stress management coach named India Dashwood, a close friend of one of his sisters. What the family doesn’t know is that Yash and India have met before, and sparks flew. But India, the Elinor of this story, is determined to keep their renewed acquaintance strictly professional — especially since Yash already has a girlfriend. Or does he?

By the time we get to “The Emma Project,” the youngest Raje sibling, Vansh, is feeling positively awash in all the pheromones being generated by his siblings and their partners. But romance isn’t in the cards for him. He’s spent the last decade happily flitting around the globe to drop in on one do-gooder project after another, and a chance meeting with a man named Hari sets him on a new project: helping houseless San Franciscans. He finds himself competing for funding with none other than his brother’s much older ex-girlfriend. Her disdain for what she calls Vansh’s “Emma Project” is matched only by her determination not to let him ruin her big opportunity to realize her dream of helping millions of South Asian women through microfinancing. Vansh doesn’t see why they have to fight over it. Can’t they just work together — and be friends with benefits?