true false top 25% +=500 center top 50% top 33% true 1 1 none 0.5 0 none center top 50% top 33% true 1 1 none 0.5 0 none center top 50% top 33% true 1 3 none 0.5 0 none center top 50% top 33% true 1 3 none 0.5 0 none

Book Author(s): Brooke Burroughs

The Marriage Code

This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.

When Emma turns down her longtime boyfriend’s surprise marriage proposal (in public, no less), she doesn’t feel devastated about the potential loss of a love but sad she hurt him and a bit confused and disappointed in herself that she doesn’t feel more strongly for him. As she’s trying to figure out what will happen next in her personal life, she goes in to work and finds out that the software project she’s been working on and feels proud of is going to be changed into an app — and some stranger from the office in India says he is going to be in charge.

Because of her insecure background, having a job to take care of herself is paramount, so Emma talks to her boss and manages to get the position leading the app-development team, but she will have to relocate to India for a year — and work closely with Rishi, who was about to take over her project.

For his part, Rishi had been promised the lead position, and he expected to have the opportunity to work in Seattle for a while, allowing him to earn more money to help his family after an unfortunate situation left them with no savings. To see some perfectionist, entitled American woman take his job and then have to work with her steams him. But his parents have been pressuring him to get married, and so far none of their matches have led to any sparks. Emma, hoping to smooth their working relationship, offers to write a code that will help him find the perfect bride.

As they work on the code and the app together, Emma is pleasantly surprised to find that Rishi isn’t so bad. And he is nice enough to show her around Bangalore and introduce her to the best places to eat, since she loves Indian food. Their working relationship turns into friendship, and then into mutual attraction. When the code ends up finding a potential bride who ticks all the right boxes for Rishi and his traditional family, he has to decide how to deal with his budding relationship with Emma, appease his family and be a good son and brother, and maybe even also be true to himself.

The Marriage Code is a nice little romance about two people from very different cultures who nonetheless find they have a lot in common but then have to navigate some tough territory. I enjoyed reading about the food, the sights and culture and got just a small window into some of the traditions of one group of people in a part of India. It made me realize just how little I know about India, its traditions, languages and people, and how those differ region to region. The story itself I’ll probably not remember for long, but it was enjoyable.

Rated: High. Profanity includes 14 instances of strong language, about 10 uses of moderate language, and 25 or so uses of mild language. Sexual content includes characters fantasizing about each other and several scenes of sex. They are fairly brief and mild or moderate in detail. The author uses fairly mild elements to create some working-up-to-steamy scenes that then mostly go “off-screen.”

Click here to purchase your copy of The Marriage Code on Amazon. 

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top