Finding the perfect recipe for rom-com
View(s):- A British-Sri Lankan Jeevani Charika has been shortlisted for this year’s British Romantic Novel Awards for her novel The Winner Bakes It All
By Yomal Senerath-Yapa
Jeevani Charika (or Rhoda Baxter, to give her very British sounding nom de plume) is as unlikely a romantic novelist as any. She is an ace at science and has a DPhil in microbiology.
This ‘bookworm’ however is fast accumulating a following as a romantic comedy novelist in the UK, and has been shortlisted for this year’s British Romantic Novel Awards for her ‘rom-com’, The Winner Bakes It All. It involves a handsome Sri Lankan hero and low-carb baker called Mal, who wages culinary war against Elodie, who is an expert in sugar-craft.
Jeevani Charika
What is special about Jeevani’s fiction is that each story has a Sri Lankan streak, however faint, to it. One novel is in fact, called When Soma Met Sahan, and each novel has a Sri Lankan character or several even in the early days when she had to hide under the penname Rhoda Baxter and have ‘only white’ protagonists.
Jeevani has had her culture shocks. She was born in England but spent most of her childhood in Colombo (till 16) with short spells in Nigeria and Micronesia. She read a lot, Enid Blytons like Mallory Towers, Famous Five and then, Nancy Drew. She read loads of Terry Pratchett too and says she “tried not to be the sort of person that Granny Weatherwax would call an ‘idiot!’”
At Musaeus College where she schooled, she used to scribble industriously and her manuscripts passed through the class and came back a month later with notes scribbled in the margins; ‘reader feedback’ by friends.
So how did she get into romance? When she first stumbled on the genre (reading author Sophie Kinsella) it was the happy endings and the fact that the woman got to win always that seduced her. From then on she ‘leaned on’ romantic novels whenever life got hard.
Writing ‘closed door’ romances (the bedroom door is ‘firmly shut’) means using layers of comedy as well as food, but that does not mean the serious is banished-the two can co-exist alongside, says Jeevani.
While her career as an Intellectual Property Officer for universities is going ahead, she always stuck with her writing. After completing her DPhil thesis she signed up for a creative writing evening class.
She wrote with assiduity; 8 to 10 in the night have since always been writing time, even after becoming a mother. It took three years to complete her first book draft. “If you write 250 words a day, every day, you can write a 75,000 word novel in a year,” she says.
Jeevani was struck by a Sinhala teledrama called Rata Giya Aththo which captured the experience of Sri Lankan expats with all its frustrations, clashes and culture shock. She wanted badly to “capture that feeling in my books”.
In the 2000s when she was a newbie to writing, the average romance novel had slightly ditzy heroines and macho heroes. “I wanted to read a book about a heroine who was smart and a man who was a nice guy. So, in the end, I wrote one.”
That novel was her second – Girl on the Run. It taught her that her voice was more suited for rom-coms. 
The books are far from being cushy and cerise. There are serious strands woven in; The Winner Bakes it All is also a tale of “how our families shape us and about breaking out of the mould we’ve been pushed into” though it’s also “about love and cake”. A Convenient Marriage is about friendship, and what marriage looks like when it’s a partnership, rather than the romance side of it. When Soma Met Sahan is about motherhood and hanging on to your identity.
“The first time I saw a Sri Lankan character in a mainstream novel, I got such a jolt of recognition that I still remember it, a couple of decades later.” Consequently Jeevani writes about Asians who, “just arrived in the UK and struggled” instead of living and loving like ordinary mortals.
“One of my favourite reviews is from an Indian-American book blogger who said ‘it’s the first time I’ve seen myself in a romance novel’. I loved that! In particular, she picked out a line that mentioned how Chinese food tastes better in Sri Lanka than in England. It’s a small observation, but it’s true.”
The name Rhoda Baxter incidentally is because her PhD was on the bacterium called Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Her protagonists were initially all white and it was years later she got an agent who loved books with Sri Lankan characters. Today she has published four books with HQ (a Harper Collins imprint).
Jeevani personally has a sweet tooth, and writes up recipes for the food mentioned in her books and sends them out in her newsletter. The gin and tonic cupcakes from The Winner Bakes it All were “very popular”.
Meticulous about detail, a lot of background research goes in whether it is about the pangs of a particular type of a back surgery gone through by a character, or an exotic dessert.
Asked for the perfect recipe for a scintillating romance, Jeevani is precise.
“First and foremost – great characters. Any recipe is only as good as the quality of the ingredients. I like my heroines to be smart and capable and my heroes to be kind (I mostly write male-female couples, but the same applies to other pairings). The most important thing though, is that they are believable.
“Add a reason for them to be attracted to each other. They should each fulfil something that the other one needs to find balance in their lives. Throw in a good obstacle that’s stopping them from being together.
“Optionally, add some interesting tidbits-like chocolate chips. Stir until it looks like things are going to go horribly wrong and all the ingredients are going to separate out.
“Then bake and watch your characters rise to the occasion. As with all baking, it’s in the timing and the chemistry.
“The happy ending is just the icing on the cake.”
The Romantic Novel of the Year Awards 2025 will happen on May 19 at the Leonardo Royal Hotel, London.
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