Today is my stop on the Beauty and the Besharam Book tour! Thanks TBR and Beyond Tours for letting me be a part of this tour. If you are looking for a cute rom-com story with diverse characters, YA teen drama, a sunshine-and-cinnamon-rolls love interest, and plenty of banter and sexual tension between high school rivals then I think you would enjoy this book. For my stop on the Beauty and the Besharam Book Tour, I will be talking about the top five reasons you should read Beauty and the Besharam. Hope you enjoy!
Heated competition leads to even hotter romance in this YA summer rom-com for fans of Sandhya Menon, Emma Lord, and Wibbroka.Seventeen-year-old, high-achieving Kavya Joshi has always been told she’s a little too ambitious, a little too mouthy, and overall just a little too much. In one word: besharam.So, when her nemesis, Ian Jun, witnesses Kavya’s very public breakup with her loser boyfriend on the last day of junior year, she decides to lay low and spend the summer doing what she loves best–working part time playing princess roles for childrens’ birthday parties. But her plan is shot when she’s cast as Ariel instead of her beloved Belle, and learns that Ian will be her Prince Eric for the summer. [Cue the combative banter.]Exhausted by Kavya and Ian’s years-long feud, their friends hatch a plan to end their rivalry by convincing them to participate in a series of challenges throughout the summer. Kavya is only too eager to finally be declared the winner. But as the competition heats up, so too does the romantic tension, until it escalates from a simmer to a full-on burn.
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1. The Characters
I really loved Kavya Joshi as a POV character. Since this is described as a gender-swapped contemporary version of beauty and the beast, Kavya is the “beast” and therefore a flawed character. She is overly-competitive, stubborn, and selfish at times. But she is strong-willed, smart, confident, ambitious, and determined to prove her self worth without needing anyone to “save her”.
Kavya’s feelings of being Too Much (or too besharam which is the Hindi word for shameless) and therefore difficult to like because that was the story she was always told growing up is very relatable for me. What I love most about her is how she never lets those insecurities stop her from being herself. When she’s wrong and apologizes, she never makes herself smaller just to make the other person feel big and I find that very admirable.
Ian Jun is the epitome of the “Sunshine-Too-Good-For-This-World-Cinnamon-Roll” love interest trope and it’s a good trope for a reason because Ian is very lovable! Other than him basically being modern YA teen version of Prince Charming, what I love most about Ian is his moments of vulnerability when he talked about his anxiety and grief. Those scenes were some of my favorite parts of the book.
There’s so many other good side characters in this book, too. I loved Kavya’s friend group that together make up a girl gang known as the moon girls! One of my favorite parts to read was getting to see how Kavya’s relationship dynamic with her big sister changed and they grew closer together. I loved all the sibling bonding time!
2. The Diversity
There’s so much diversity in this book! With an Indian American and bi main character and an Korean American love interest with anxiety. There was lots of other side characters that were POC and/or LGBTQA+. There also were some open discussions about anxiety sexuality, and identity including one about demiromanticism that is a marginalized identity that I’m happy to see more talked about.
I mostly LOVED all the diverse food!!! There was so much delicious descriptions of food, enough to make your mouth water! There was also a Fusion diner place that I would totally go to if it were real!
3. The Romance
Kavya and Ian’s romance was so much fun! Beauty and the Besharam had some of my favorite romance tropes. There was the Rivals to Lovers trope with Workplace forced proximity and lots of Banter and Sexual Tension. It also had one of my favorite couple ship dynamics, the Grumpy-heroine/Sunshine-hero trope!
I loved that since Kavya and Ian were rivals, they were both equals and understood each others competitiveness. They pushed each other to do their best. I loved how they saw both the best and worst in each other but accepted each other as themselves.
4. The Fairytale Vibes and Disney References
Since just me knowing it’s Beauty and the Beast-inspired was enough to make me want to read this book, I LOVED all the fairytale vibes and Disney references! Learning Kavya’s favorite Disney Princess was Belle filled me with so much joy! Because just like Kavya, I too found Belle from Beauty and the Beast the most relatable and inspiring as a kid. I loved all the references and Easter eggs to other Disney Princesses and movies too. The story at times felt like something out of a fairytale with ballroom dances, swoony love confessions, and midnight wanderings around a castle.
5. The Relatable Book Nerd/Reader Moments
Kavya and Ian both take part in a Summer reading program so they are basically competing with each other on who could read the most books! As a book lover, dating a fellow reader sounds like the most romantic thing ever! I loved how they told each other about how many books they were reading and who their favorite books/authors were. Kavya’s book nerd moments were VERY relatable!!!
Lillie Vale is the author of books for both teens and adults, including The Decoy Girlfriend, Beauty and the Besharam, The Shaadi Set-Up and Small Town Hearts, an American Library Association’s 2020 Rainbow Books List selection. She writes about secrets and yearning, complicated and ambitious girls who know what they want, the places we call home and people we find our way back to, and the magic we make. Born in Mumbai, she grew up in Mississippi, Texas, and North Dakota, and now lives in an Indiana college town.
Check out Vale’s Author Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
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So that was my post for my stop on the Beauty and the Besharam Book tour! If you have read this book, what were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!
