Give Love a Chai is a sweet, slightly angsty, and engaging romance about second chances.

Tia and Andrew I found this couple's interactions delightful and charming. My main problem was lack of communication, it was frustrating at times.

Overall, I liked this book and have no doubt readers who love charming second-chance-at-romance plotlines will enjoy this story.

2.5 stars

This was a great second chance romance.

You could feel the connection between Ting (Tia) and Andrew from the first few pages when you see (read) them reunited for the first time in 10 years. I was immediately curious about what drove them apart. Initially, I was annoyed that they lost 10 years to miscommunication but I also understand that the combination of being young and having multiple outside influences weighing on a new marriage can really take it's toll on people.

As far as the "love triangle" aspect of this book, I appreciate how Ting's relationship with Clayton was handled. I am torn about my feelings for Clayton because he handled that whole situation in a mature and surprising manor but he also failed to protect Tia from his mother's judgement and snide remarks. Clearly, their engagement wasn't based on anything other than convenience.

Andrew was frustrating due to his lack of feeling "worthy" and his need to keep secrets to "protect" Ting from the ugliness of his father but Ting was keeping her own secrets too. I enjoyed seeing how they slowly found themselves falling back in love and tackling their issues instead of running away again.

It also didn't hurt that we get an appearance from Dan and Kat!! :)

*I received an ARC from Smartypants romance for voluntary review.

This is the second book in the Common Threads series, but IMO this is a series that there is no need to read them in order or even at all if you are only interested in one. I've only read (and didn't like) one Penny Reid book, so I'm not sure how these are connected to the Pennyverse, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything, so I'm assuming not very much. I was really excited to read this book after reading the synopsis, I was really hoping for some Sweet Home Alabama vibes, and while I did get that, there were a lot of things that fell flat for me. I love the premise and I loved both MC's. I feel like they had great chemistry and was rooting for them from the first page. I feel like there were times that things were really fast paced, but then in others it felt slow. I hated the non communication of these MC, I felt like 95% of their problems could have been solved if they just used their words. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book as far steam level, but I was assuming it would be open door since the first book in the series was, and I was right. IMO there weren't too many sweet or swoony parts. I did really like the letters though. I'm a sucker for secondary characters, and I hated that I only liked one, maybe two of them. I will say that I was terribly excited that we only had to deal with her ex fiancée's mother in law a few times. She was incredibly racist and made me want to scream. While this book was pretty light, there were some heavy topics handled (miscarriage, and racism to name two).

There is no excuse for a boring book. Also, are there no romance writers who understand what academics do?

This book has a lot of feels. 2nd chance romance where they thought they divorced but didn’t. There is a lot to process but I like how they get to know each other again and have to navigate all the bombs left over from the past.
Both of their inner dialogue is so good. It’s not an easy story but it is so good.

I was all in until ~70%. Then BAM, weird plot twist that really doesn’t make much sense and IMO is resolved oddly. The final 30% felt angsty and really didn’t mesh with the rest of the book. So the first ~70% gets 4 stars, the final bits get 2 stars. And I guess we meet in the middle.

Overall Grade: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What I love most is Smartypants Romance’s insistence on representation in romance. With one of its newest books, Give Love A Chai, we are treated to a heroine not often found in the world of romance. So often, romance is white. Over the past couple of years, more and more POC authors are writing their truths into romance, but it’s been a slow process. Even more, the striation of race is still lost to certain groups. With Give Love a Chai, Nanxi Wen treats us to the Asian experience through the journey of her heroine, Ting Ting “Tia.” From just the idea that she has two names to the challenges of living with parents who dote obsessively over her, Tia’s story is one we need at a time when more representative stories are necessary.

Give Love A Chai is a second chance romance between Tia and Andrew. After a decades-long separation, Tia must ask Andrew for a divorce, something that they both believed had been completed a decade before. Tia is engaged and ready to marry, but she needs the divorce in order to move forward (I see you, Sweet Home Alabama). The problem is...Andrew and Tia aren’t done with each other. Additionally, the secrets that devastated their marriage still exist, and while Andrew wants a future with Tia, can she trust him enough to move forward?

For me, I liked the overall idea of the story. You can’t help but root for their reconciliation because there is a desperation to be together between these two. Also, Wen makes it clear at the beginning that Tia doesn’t “fit” within the life of her fiance, Clayton. With that, Wen makes it easy for the reader to want Tia and Andrew to work since choosing Clayton means living a predictable, unemotional life, something that isn’t innate to Wen’s heroine.

The issue for me with Give Love A Chai is its pacing. There were many times when it felt slow, and there wasn’t anything to push me forward. There is quite a bit of internal monologuing for Andrew and Tia that repeated the same misgivings and anxieties. For this reader, that felt overwrought. Instead, I wanted them to move forward, allowing the tension to build in reconciling the past through the revelation of secrets and finding a future in the face of the challenges of her parents’ expectations. The story doesn’t move quickly enough into that level of reconciliation, so the story reads slow.

However, Give Love A Chai sets us firmly in Penny Reid’s Knitting in the City with Andrew as a lawyer for Cipher Security. That adds some excitement to the story. Plus the ending is quite sweet and lovely with a poignant look at an interracial marriage, reconciled and accepted. In the end, Nanxi Wen’s Give Love A Chai will fill your Smartypants Romance cup; it just might take you a bit to get there.