Review: Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

I did not intend on reading this book at this time; I read it because the publisher had the ebook free for a day, and I opened it on a whim. I knew pretty early on that I wasn't very into this book; I probably should have just dropped the book, but I loved When Dimple Met Rishi so much I was hoping for a turnaround, and I love fairytale retellings. So I probably should have just moved on, but I finished the book instead.

I have many issues with this story, but I want to start by saying that I totally see why people like this book, and I don't want to tell people not to read it. If you were going to pick this book up for any of these reasons, I want to give you a heads up!

I thought the beginning of the book lacks tension to a pretty massive degree. Because we are reading from Jaya and Grey's points of view, you know immediately that Grey not only has not done anything to Jaya's family but that he is a good person. Literally, the most 'beastly' thing about him is that he is aloof. If this hadn't been a Sandhya Menon book, I would have put this book down because I thought the 'beast' character was way too likable. The fun of a beauty and the beast retelling is making us hate the love interest at first, then chipping that feeling away over time. This was not there for me. The whole first chunk of the book, I just kind of wanted them to hurry it up because I wanted to get to a different conflict.

I did really like Menon's choice to give Jaya flaws; so many beauty and the beast stories do not give the 'beauty' actual flaws. Jaya has them, and over the course of the story, she becomes aware of them and acts to change herself. My only critique of this is that she kind of changes very quickly at the end; I would have preferred her to have some of these realizations earlier in the narrative. I also thought that at times Jaya's judgemental nature was unevenly applied. She was so completely and totally non judgemental of Daphne Elizabeth being the other woman while we watched Caterina, the girlfriend of the dude, have a breakdown; I just thought it was so odd that she was judgmental in basically every other aspect of her life except this thing that is pretty reasonable to be judgmental about.

So much of Jaya's motivation is her sister, but we really only spend time with her in the first 15% of the book, then like two or three scenes after that. I would have loved more sisterly bonding time on the page, especially because that was so central to Jaya's motivation throughout the book.

I also thought the book was a little heavy-handed with foreshadowing and with doing a lot of telling and not showing. The real cause of all of Jaya's problems was pretty obvious from the very beginning of the book, this could be an issue caused by my being outside of the target age range, but I obviously don't have a way to test that theory. But the characters so often told us how they were feeling when I already understood that from the earlier description of their body language or the way they were behaving. It just made it feel like Menon didn't trust her reader to understand the characters' emotions if they weren't laid out.

The way this book began, I thought there would be more of an examination of class than there was. I found it tremendously frustrating that we would swing near a deeper conversation about wealth inequality but then just jump over it and move onto the next topic. If you read this, be prepared to listen to many rich people being very unaware and never really have it seriously addressed.

I really did not like the way Grey's issues resolved. It was so sudden, and I am not sure there was enough groundwork for me. It was also so contradictory. How am I meant to believe both the Grey thought he was going to be dead and that he has been preparing for a life without his family the whole time? Similar contradictions cropped up a few times with him, an example of which was that he never touched people, so dancing with Jaya was incredibly intimate and that he was an excellent dancer who had done it often. How does that make sense?

I thought the way Daphne Elizabeth and Caterina's story ended was a little lackluster. I assume this is because Caterina is the romantic lead of the next book, but every time Caterina was on the page after like her third appearance, I just thought that she needed more from this book. I might read book two just because I loved Rahul so much, and he is slated to be the main character.

I just said I might read book two, and I will probably also read From Twinkle with Love, or There's Something About Sweetie, and just see if maybe me not enjoying this book was a fluke, if I just don't like this particular series, or if I maybe aged out of this author. I am hoping it is a fluke, but leaning towards I just don't like this series. I am relatively sure I will continue to like her other books, though!

I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph. I would recommend this book to you if you like fairytale retellings and those things that bothered me, don’t seem like hindrances to your enjoyment!