[amazon_link id=”B00LZPQGP2″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : Trouble Has a New Name
Author : Adite Banerjie
Genre : Romance
Publisher : Harlequin
Pages: 192
Publish Date : July 15th, 2014
Source : Author
Rating : 3/5
This is author Banerjie’s second romance novel after “The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal”. And in this novel, she has model Rayna Dutt meet arrogant hotel owner Neel Arora at a big fat Indian wedding in the Andaman Islands. Not theirs of course. Rayna has recently been dumped by her boyfriend via text message, and Neel might just be the antidote for her bruised ego. Especially when smarmy ex-boyfriend Sid Verma shows up with a new girlfriend in tow.
“Trouble Has a New Name” has all the ingredients for a smoldering romance – a beautiful model and a “Greek God with washboard abs”. Rayna and Neel both come with a lot of baggage and Banerjie does a nice job fleshing that in. Rayna is an orphan, who’s got her disapproving brother and bhabhi looking over her shoulder. Neel has had traumatic events happen in his own family, and the past has scarred him so badly that he is wary of getting too involved. And since the venue for all this is a lush Indian wedding, we have nosy wedding guests including royalty, scurrilous media reporters and a smidgeon of Bollywood all mixed in.
This book is a fun beach read, although it is a tad cliched with the fake fiancé romance formula. Banerjie does Indianize this theme with the familial “what will everyone say?” attachments, and the whole “fair vs. dark” skin debate (Rayna is a dusky beauty) – so that was nice. However with this book, we get closer to the Page 3/beautiful people/Karan Johar-esque romance formula (I think this book would make a great Bollywood film, especially with the sheen and the glamor of the beautiful locales), so I’m hoping that in her future work she breaks out and gives us a distinctive voice with more character development; I’d like more of Rayna and Neel.
As before, the author does well on the attraction-that-can’t-be-denied theme, and the blow hot-blow cold storyline keeps things rolling. If you are looking for an entertaining romance read, this is it.