Amara Pardeshi
on Risk Appetite
Elegant, emotionally precise and quietly devastating, Risk Appetite by Amara Pardeshi follows a woman whose carefully ordered life begins to unravel in the most unexpected place. Not in love itself, but in the space where ambition and desire become impossible to separate. It asks whether objectivity is always wisdom, or whether sometimes we mistake caution for truth. Ahead of its release, Studio Sirela sat down with Amara to talk about the moments that changed her, the ones she chose to write down, and the few she still prefers to leave between the lines.
Studio Sirela: The title belongs to finance, but by the end your writing seems to describe the heart more accurately than the balance sheet. Did that evolution surprise you?
Amara Pardeshi: It did, because I genuinely thought I was writing about work. I lived this story through meetings and endless conversations about risk, so it seemed natural that the language would belong to finance. Only later did I realise I’d been measuring something much less tangible all along. The balance sheet was simply the place where everything began. The real question was never whether a business was worth believing in, but whether another person was and whether I could trust myself enough to believe in what I couldn’t quantify.
Studio Sirela: When did you realise you weren’t writing about a deal anymore, you were writing about a person?
Amara Pardeshi: Much later than I’d like to admit. While I was living it, I kept convincing myself the deal was still the center of the story because that felt safer. It gave me structure, deadlines, something I knew how to solve. Looking back, I can see the shift happened in much quieter moments. A dinner after service, a train ride home, a conversation that had nothing to do with financing at all. By the time I sat down to write Risk Appetite, I realised the deal had simply been the reason our lives crossed. The story had always been about the person.
Studio Sirela: Looking back now, what surprised you most about the woman who lived this story before you chose to write it?
Amara Pardeshi: I think I underestimated how much she was carrying. At the time, I thought I was simply trying to do my job well and make sensible decisions. I didn’t realise how much of my identity depended on always being composed, always having the right answer. What surprises me now isn’t that I fell in love, it’s how hard I worked to explain it away before I allowed myself to simply feel it. I have a great deal of affection for that version of myself. She thought caution would protect her. She hadn’t yet discovered that sometimes it only delays the inevitable.
Studio Sirela: Readers will inevitably talk about the chemistry between you and Lucas, but the friendships at the center of your life feel just as important. Was that balance intentional?
Amara Pardeshi: Completely. If Risk Appetite were only about the relationship, I don’t think it would feel true to the life I was actually living. I wasn’t waiting for someone to arrive and rearrange my world, I already had one. My friends were the people who witnessed me before I understood what was happening. They challenged me, distracted me, reminded me who I was when I became consumed by what I couldn’t explain. Love may alter the emotional landscape, but friendship is often the ground beneath it. I wanted the novella to honour that, because it certainly honoured me.
Studio Sirela: The man at the center of the novella remains quietly elusive, even after we’ve spent so much time with him. Were you protecting him, or protecting the mystery?
Amara Pardeshi: I think I was protecting the experience more than either of us. The moment you explain someone too completely, you flatten them into certainty, and people are never that simple. He exists in Risk Appetite as I experienced him. Sometimes wonderfully knowable, sometimes entirely out of reach.
Studio Sirela: Without revealing too much, there’s a dinner after service that quietly changes the emotional temperature of the story. Why do you think we reveal ourselves so honestly over food?
Amara Pardeshi: I think food gives us permission to stop performing. There’s something wonderfully ordinary about sharing a table that makes honesty feel less intimidating. You’re passing plates, pouring wine, noticing the way someone remembers how you take your coffee, and before you realise it, the conversation has wandered somewhere much more personal. That dinner mattered because neither of us arrived expecting anything profound to happen. We were simply together. Sometimes that’s when people reveal the truest versions of themselves, when no one is trying to impress, only to stay a little longer than they planned.
Studio Sirela: There are moments when you seem most powerful precisely because you stop trying to be in control. How do you understand those moments now?
Amara Pardeshi: For a long time, I mistook control for strength. It kept my life orderly. What surprised me was discovering that trust requires a different kind of courage. Not the absence of judgment, but the willingness to stop managing every outcome. I don’t think I became less powerful over the course of Risk Appetite. If anything, I became more honest about what real confidence looks like. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let another person see you before you’ve decided exactly how you want to be seen.
Studio Sirela: The novella returns again and again to the idea of being seen. Why does recognition feel more dangerous than attraction?
Amara Pardeshi: Attraction is easy to misunderstand. It can be fleeting, flattering, even accidental. Recognition is much more precise. It’s the moment someone notices the parts of you that exist beneath competence, ambition, or whatever version of yourself you’ve carefully assembled for the world. That’s much harder to hide from. I think we spend years hoping to be understood, and then, when it finally happens, we realise how exposed it makes us feel.
Studio Sirela: If Risk Appetite has one emotional question beneath everything else, what do you think it is?
Amara Pardeshi: I think it’s asking whether protecting yourself is always the same thing as being honest. For a long time, I believed caution was wisdom. That if I thought hard enough, measured carefully enough, I could avoid unnecessary risk. Then I met someone who made me wonder whether certainty can become its own kind of prison. Risk Appetite isn’t really about whether love is worth the risk. It’s about whether the life you’ve carefully protected is still the life you actually want.
Studio Sirela: Finally, if readers close the novella still thinking about one conversation, or one unanswered question, what do you hope stays with them?
Amara Pardeshi: I hope it isn’t certainty. I hope it’s the feeling of almost reaching for something, of recognizing a moment in your own life when everything could have gone one way or another. I’d like readers to carry that with them. Some of the most important moments in our lives are the ones that leave us wondering.
Set between the polished world of London finance and the charged atmosphere of fine dining, Risk Appetite is a character-driven contemporary romance about desire, identity, and the quiet courage required to choose a life that belongs to you.
Tropes Include Workplace Romance | Reserved Heroine | Dominant Hero | Opposites Attract | Forced Proximity | Good Girl Awakening
