Marriage by Arrangement Review

Marriage by Arrangement is the first book in the Nights at the Mahal series by Sophia Singh Sasson. I read this book back in August for the Indian Readathon. This is a contemporary romance from the Harlequin Desire line and it is written by an Indian author.

Rani Gupta is a chubby, divorced Indian woman who works as an architect in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the company she works for and her boss don't really appreciate her work or talent for design and concept. Her boss has been dangling a promised promotion over Rani's head for a while now. This new project, to design a hotel for the wealthy Indian bachelor Arjun Singh, is supposed to force her boss to give Rani her promotion.

Of course, Rani gets something better than a promotion.

Arjun Singh is a wealthy bachelor from India. His parents are pressuring him to move forward with an arranged marriage but neither him nor the family friend he is engaged to want to get married to each other. Besides, Arjun is busy trying to break into the American market with his new hotel in Las Vegas.

There is defiantly an element of both Rani and Arjun being torn between tradition and the modern world. Rani's family is ashamed that she got a divorced even though she did not get along with her ex-husband and his family who expected her to stop working and become a traditional woman. Arjun lives in the modern business world but his parents don't want him to stray too far from tradition. He's been trying to get out of his arranged marriage for a while but it's tough navigating between modern ideas of love and marriage and traditional values and family.

I loved this book. The pacing was great and I was invested in the characters. I felt like I could relate to Rani from the point of view of a chubby/plus size woman. Rani had a few insecurities at the start because Arjun is this hottie bachelor who is always in the Indian tabloids. He's tall, handsome and rich. He's basically a dream guy whereas Rani is this chubby, darker skinned divorced woman. Who would expect that she would be Arjun's type? Who would expect him to fall in love with her?

Oh! But Arjun does fall in love with her. He's instantly attracted to her and thinks she is gorgeous right from the beginning. By the way, I love how this book starts off. Rani put in a lot of work in designing an Indian inspired concept for Arjun's hotel but when her boss presents the plan to Arjun and his company, she replaced almost all of Rani's designs with something basic.

Arjun was having none of that and right away realizes that the only good design in the presentation was Rani's design. And that's how Rani gets put in charge of designing some rooms for the hotel.

Of course, Arjun wants more than just a gorgeous hotel from Rani. He takes her out to dinner under the pretense that it's just for business but they soon find themselves in each other's arms and in bed.

The conflict is that Arjun doesn't fall in love with the women he meets. His affairs only last for a short period of time and the women he beds know this. He can't fall in love because he has his parents and responsibilities to think of. Plus, his (step)mother is pushing for an arranged marriage back in India.

For Rani, she doesn't believe someone like Arjun could fall in love with her. She also doesn't want to marry an Indian man because she knows what expectations come with that: she'll be marrying his family, not just him. For someone who grew up in the United States, Rani has some more modern ideas about work, love and marriage.

The characters and the romance were both solid. My only complaint would be that the model on the cover, while beautiful, doesn't really reflect Rani that well. Rani is described as being a bit overweight and having darker skin. I love the cover but it would have been nice to see a model that represented Rani a little better. Maybe save this cover for the next book? But it's a mass marketed Harlequin romance so... it is what it is, I guess.

If you're looking for a short romance featuring Indian characters written by an Indian author, I recommend picking this book up. I'm glad the love interest was an Indian man since you often don't see that in romances. I'm loving the diversity that Harlequin is putting out more recently.

Honestly, even if you're a basic white girl like I am, I think you would really enjoy this book if you like the idea of a sexy wealthy business man sweeping the heroine off her feet and seducing her in his own hotel. And people say you shouldn't mix business with pleasure. Why not?