Tastes Like Shakkar by Nisha SharmaMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review
“We think someone is trying to sabotage Kareena and Prem's wedding.”
After getting a look at the combustible energy between Benjamin and Bobbi in Dating Dr. Dil, it was obvious that in this second in the series, the steam factor was going to be turned up. With some forced proximity, since Bobbi works for her uncle's wedding planning business, it's obvious she's going to be taking charge of Kareena's wedding but when the venue needs Chef Benjamin to explain and help with the menu, these two combatants need to work together, especially when it becomes clear that a shaadi saboteur is trying to ruin the wedding.
“Your heart is pounding,” she whispered against his shoulder.
He rested his large palm at the center of her chest, feeling the soft curve of her breasts against his fingers. The steady rhythm was as fast as his own. “So is yours,” he said.
With a prologue that gives us a flashback to why Bobbi and Benjamin are antagonistic towards each other, Benjamin ruined a heated moment with foot-in-the-mouth syndrome, we're then jumped to the present and impending wedding between their friends and main couple from book one. It would be possible to jump into the series here, like I did, but I did wonder at times if there was some foundation for Bobbi and Benjamin's relationship laid a bit in book one. These two had steamy chemistry, their first couple meetings, Benjamin having to tie up Bobbi's dress, was spine tingling and they had sparking byplay. Benjamin introduces Bobbi to rope play, and with contemporary romances slamming the door shut more often than not lately, it did add some nice heat. However, because Bobbi is dealing with trying to give Kareena the best wedding ever but having to contend with the saboteur and an uncle who seems to have lost faith in her ability to some day take over the business and Benjamin is dealing with pressure from his family to move back to the west coast, help his brother take over the family business and open his next restaurant out there, these two start spending more time apart than together.
They'd stopped pranking each other, stopped poking at each other in a way that had bite to it, and now every word had more meaning. She needed to know what that meaning was once and for all.
I liked all the dynamics at play here, family, friends, and romantic but it left Bobbi on the east coast and Benjamin on the west for too much of the second half of the book. Then when they did get some time to spend together, the focus became on the bedroom and the rope play. The bedroom scenes weren't necessarily long but I was just looking for more of their fun byplay to see some of that relationship development outside of the bedroom so I knew them better and could then enjoy their bedroom scenes more; this could have been shown more in book one. There was also a couple times that I was disappointed in how there would be an emotionally charged scene, then it would cut away from the aftermath/ending to the next day and readers would have to hear Bobbi or Benjamin talk about what happened, instead of “seeing” it, experiencing it with them.
She was in so much trouble. She had to be careful, so very careful, if she wanted to come out of this with her heart intact.
The ending gives us Benjamin working out if he wants to live his life according to what his father wants or for himself and Bobbi learning to ask for help and working things out with her uncle. I thought the reveal of the shaadi saboteur was a little obscure and the coming together of Bobbi and Benjamin went too far to the end with only a couple pages left to give them their happily ever after; it makes it feel rushed and harder to believe in and enjoy. There's one friend left in the circle of Bobbi and Kareena, Veera, and the epilogue gives a sneak-peek to what her book is going to be about. I enjoyed this because the author is always so good at family dynamics and creating a world with all it's emotions and layers that it ends up absorbing you, I just would have liked to have experienced more with Bobbi and Benjamin, as their time apart with only text message exchanges didn't hit as well as their face-to-face chemistry.
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