Title: The Marriage Code
Author: Brooke Burroughs
Type: Fiction
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Montlake Romance (Amazon Publishing)
Date published: January 1, 2021
A complimentary physical copy of this book was kindly provided by Thomas Allen & Son in exchange for an honest review.
Emma has always lived her life according to a plan. But after turning down her boyfriend’s proposal, everything starts to crumble. In an effort to save the one thing she cares about—her job—she must recruit her colleague, Rishi, to be on her development team…only she may or may not have received the position he was promised. (She did.)
Rishi cannot believe that he got passed over for promotion. To make matters worse, not only does his job require him to return home to Bangalore with his nemesis, Emma, but his parents now expect him to choose a bride and get married. So, when Emma makes him an offer—join her team, and she’ll write an algorithm to find him the perfect bride—he reluctantly accepts.
Neither of them expect her marriage code to work so well—or to fall for one another—which leads Emma and Rishi to wonder if leaving fate up to formulas is really an equation for lasting love.
⤖ My Review ⬻
What initially drew me to The Marriage Code was the change of setting for this romance. A good amount of romances that end up on my radar are set in the US, and I’ve been trying to look for romances set in other locations (preferably outside of the US, Canada, and English-speaking Europe, haha). So, when I read that The Marriage Code would at least partially take place in India, I knew that it was something that I wanted to read!
And I definitely wasn’t disappointed! I traveled to South India alongside the two main characters, and I definitely enjoyed it. I tried South Indian food because of this book and am so glad that I’m aware of this cuisine now! (I love dosas, oh my goodness.)
I do want to point out that India in The Marriage Code was described to me through the experience of a white woman (both the female lead and the author are white). So, I would definitely defer to Indian readers and bloggers about the accuracy of how culture, locations, etc. were depicted.
As for the romance itself, I definitely enjoyed it! This was a hate-to-love type romance, and I definitely understood why the main couple disliked each other at the first, while also feeling some strong chemistry between them! I also enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know how things would turn out. Yes, since it’s a romance, I did mostly anticipate that there would be a happy ending (although you never know), so I was more meaning that I couldn’t predict the journey to said ending.
All in all, this was definitely an enjoyable read for me…And I definitely enjoyed the female lead’s relationship with food while she’s in San Francisco and in India. I also liked that where she had some prejudices about what Indian food is based on what she’s eaten in the U.S., the male lead, Rishi, was quick to set her straight. This book fed both my needs as a romantic and a foodie for sure!
⤖ About the Author ⬻
Brooke Burroughs has worked in the IT industry for over ten years and lived in India–where she met her husband–for three. Burroughs has experience navigating the feeling of being an outsider in a traditional, orthodox family. Luckily, she and her in-laws get along well now, but maybe it’s because she agreed to a small South Indian wedding (with
almost a thousand people in attendance) and already happened to be a vegetarian with an Indian food-takeout obsession.
⤖ Places to Purchase the Book ⬻
⤖ Let's Chat ⬻
Thank you for reading my review! Have you read this book? What did you think? And if you haven’t read it yet, do you plan to? Let me know in the comments!
