Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron

I enjoyed Accidentally Engaged and The Chai Factor for their sweet romance, depiction of an Asian Muslim family, and food descriptions/obsessions.

This book, a friends-to-lovers kind of riff on an Austen Emma story also has all that: Kamila has parties so there’s attention to food (especially different nationality takes on Biryani), family-centric plots (in an Austen type way), and a sweet romance wherein the hero/heroine kind of don’t do more than get to second base or fade-to-black.

There’s a minimum reference to Muslim heritage– for instance Kamila often opts for nonalcoholic cocktails– but mostly its about contemporary mainstream eating/drinking, non-religious references.

Kamila is a CPA, but her real heart is in her volunteer work running fundraisers and throwing Bollywood parties each week for her extended friends network. This includes Rohan, who is an old family friend often over at her house to help with caring for her slightly infirm father.

When Kamila’s old nemesis returns from abroad, her father decides to make business changes, she’s pulled into a higher-level fundraising opportunity…Kamila’s life begins to change, and she begins to feel differently about Rohan.

This was a fun take on Emma. Kamila doesn’t whole-heartedly steer her Harriet/Maricela in the wrong direction, kind of benignly neglects her instead, so she’s not as misguided as the original. She also spends some time as a fasionista-apologizer which felt unnecessary to me. But I did like the party details, and the slow realization of how much Rohan meant to her, as well as the development of the Jane Fairfax relationship.

These are fairly sweet romances so for my own taste, I could always use a little more steam 🙂