A review by ashleytalksbooks
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

This was a good book and could easily have been a four or five star read for me, but the problematic elements knocked it down several notches unfortunately. Spoilers ahead as well as a content warning for sexual assault and ableism:
Exploring male victims of sexual assault is a very important story to bring light to and deserves proper treatment. Choosing to have a teenage girl sexually assault and drug a grown man as a plot point is not doing that. The implications and optics of a rich powerful man being taken advantage of by a teenage girl casts doubt on victims and is irresponsible story telling. Especially when there were far better ways to adapt Whickham. They could have had her embezzling his campaign funds and stealing money or even had her be an older adult who took advantage of him as a political mentor when he was just starting at his career. Every time it was mentioned I felt sick at my stomach and the story would have been so much better if anything else was done.

There were also multiple parts that seemed to be an attempt to give disabled rep that felt very ableist. The way they handled their cousin with epilepsy. Them never leaving the attic felt really gross especially with the real world history of locking disabled people away.
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