A Goodreads user asked Sonali Dev:

Big fan here! I just finished reading A Change of Heart and I wondered: was it difficult for you to write Ria? In The Bollywood Bride, we got to experience her internal dialogue as she wrestled with her life, which made her seem more relatable. However, the way Jess saw her is how she actually would seem: cold and somewhat spoiled. It was quite jarring, especially after reading the two stories one after the other!

Sonali Dev Hi! That's an amazingly astute observation. I am very fascinated by the disconnect between our inner selves and our outer selves, our public selves and our private selves. Who we are and what people see us as is such a combination of factors (their perspectives and prejudices, plus our own). Ria's entire story was about reconciling those two parts. So to answer your question she was not at all hard for me to write in terms of who she was, but she was hard to make 'likeable' because readers (like people we meet in life) judge us by our actions rather than our thoughts. And her actions (or the lack there of) at the beginning come from a place of fear.
As for how Jess sees her, Jess comes with her own prejudices that come from her own darker, less fortunate experiences and circumstances. It's not so much that Ria is cold and spoiled, but that she's protective of Nikhil. Jess has to grow past some of her darkness to see past Ria's darkness.
Basically I love both women and it was a joy to explore this mess of perception with them.

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