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thesempiternalreader's review
5.0
Thank you to the author for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Beauty and the Besharam is about Kavya, who was always considered to be too brash, ambitious and besharam. To make it worse, her public breakup is witnessed by her arch-nemesis Ian Jun so all she wants is to lay low during the summer. But instead, she's dragged into a competition to resolve her longstanding rivalry with Ian. I always like to read academic rivals to lovers and this book stayed true to this trope. I lived for the banter between Kavya and Ian. Their efforts to one-up each other in tests, reading challenges, and basically, everything was hilarious to read. Apart from the romance, I appreciated reading about the complex family dynamics, friendships and cruel taunts from 'well-meaning' acquaintances that are very frequent in the South Asian community. I was very envious of the moon girls as I wanted to have a group of friends who stood by me when I was young. I could see how smitten Ian was with Kavya that I was internally squealing with joy. My favourite part of the story was the character growth of every character. This made the entire book all the more enjoyable. I would recommend this book to everyone who is a fan of academic rivals to lovers, the hero falls in love first, messy siblings' relationship, a girl gang, and a hero who reads books. This has everything that makes a best contemporary romance.
Beauty and the Besharam is about Kavya, who was always considered to be too brash, ambitious and besharam. To make it worse, her public breakup is witnessed by her arch-nemesis Ian Jun so all she wants is to lay low during the summer. But instead, she's dragged into a competition to resolve her longstanding rivalry with Ian. I always like to read academic rivals to lovers and this book stayed true to this trope. I lived for the banter between Kavya and Ian. Their efforts to one-up each other in tests, reading challenges, and basically, everything was hilarious to read. Apart from the romance, I appreciated reading about the complex family dynamics, friendships and cruel taunts from 'well-meaning' acquaintances that are very frequent in the South Asian community. I was very envious of the moon girls as I wanted to have a group of friends who stood by me when I was young. I could see how smitten Ian was with Kavya that I was internally squealing with joy. My favourite part of the story was the character growth of every character. This made the entire book all the more enjoyable. I would recommend this book to everyone who is a fan of academic rivals to lovers, the hero falls in love first, messy siblings' relationship, a girl gang, and a hero who reads books. This has everything that makes a best contemporary romance.
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