Synopsis
Pooja Patel has spent her whole life being told what success should look like. A good degree. A stable job. A suitable marriage. What she actually wants is to dance — to choreograph a West End musical that brings garba, Bollywood and South Asian culture to a British stage that has never quite made room for it. Instead, she's behind a Tesco till, counting down the days between shifts and auditions.
Philip "Phil" Rivers built Ray and Co. from nothing, left school at fourteen, and answered to no one. Six months ago, a car accident changed that. Now he uses a wheelchair, he has already run off two personal assistants, and he has no interest in a third.
Pooja takes the job anyway — flexible hours, decent pay, and a boss who barely looks up from his post. What begins as diaries, deliveries and deliberately short answers slowly, stubbornly becomes something neither of them saw coming: two people from entirely different worlds, each carrying more than they let on, learning to let someone else in.
Told in alternating voices, Pooja and Phil is a story about the families we're born into and the ones we choose, about chasing a dream the people who love you don't understand, and about what it costs — and what it's worth — to finally be seen.
At the Heart of the Story
At the Heart of the Story
Friendship across difference
A twenty-one-year-old British Asian dreamer and a guarded, self-made businessman decades her senior — two lives that were never supposed to intersect, finding unlikely common ground.
Chasing a dream against the odds
Pooja's pull toward dance and theatre collides with her family's hopes for a conventional career, and with how much courage it takes to keep believing in yourself when no one else does yet.
British Asian identity and belonging
What it means to be, in Pooja's own words, 'a fusion of being British and Indian' — and to refuse to abandon either half of that identity.
Vulnerability and connection
Beneath Phil's guardedness is a man learning, slowly, that being truly known is worth the risk — a lesson that reshapes them both.
Read an Excerpt
From Chapter One
I wake up on a frosty Monday morning; it's dark, and the trees have lost all their leaves. It's as though life has gone into hiding, and time seems to have stopped. I hear Mum fussing downstairs in the kitchen, getting breakfast ready. I drag myself into the shower, the pit of my stomach filled with dread. A new week, same old shift working at the local Tesco.
I make my way to the kitchen, grab my favourite mug from the cabinet above the sink, and greet my Mum. "Morning, Mum." "Morning, diku," she replies in a chirpy tone. Mum is a morning person and always in a good mood before nine. "You're up early today." "Yep — got an early shift." "I've made masala tea, give me your mug." Mum's magic masala tea: a much-needed hug of motivation in a mug on a frosty morning. "I don't like you working in this job," Mum says. "Can you not find a good office job?" Education is everything in the Patel household. My brother is a doctor. All five of my cousins have Master's degrees. And then there's me — the one who scraped Bs at GCSE and went straight into retail.
My heart is not made for conventional education; my love is dance and theatre. Ever since I was seven years old, watching my first Bollywood film, I fell for it completely. I still dance away my problems every Navratri, nine nights given over to garba in reverence of Mataji. My ultimate dream is to act, dance and choreograph a West End musical built around South Asian culture. My other dream is drama school — but your girl needs funds.
End of sample — from Chapter One of Pooja and Phil
Two lives, one unexpected friendship
Meet Pooja and Phil in full — their ambitions, their guardedness, and where their story begins.
Looking to go deeper? Visit the reading guide for spoiler-free discussion questions.