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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
3 1/2 stars
At sixteen, Twinkle dreams of becoming a filmmaker who cracks the glass ceiling for women of color and inspires other girls to aim high. Inside her mind, she’s a powerful director, bringing her vision to life. On the outside, she’s the quiet girl who can’t ever seem to stand up for herself: not to her supposed BFF Maddie who’s been abandoning her more and more, not to her years-long crush, Neil, who calls her by the wrong name, and especially not to her workaholic parents who don’t seem to care about her dreams. When Neil’s shy and nerdy twin, Sahil, offers to produce her debut film for the student showcase, she decides to finally share her voice with the world, and she finds herself falling for Sahil more and more in the process.
There are no brooding boys in this book, no creepy sleep-watching, no subtle pressuring. Instead of your beauty makes me barely able to maintain control, we get your beauty inspires me to maintain healthy boundaries and respectfully listen to your thoughts and opinions. Sahil will fill your days with tiny, thoughtful kindnesses and vulnerable honesty. He’ll apologize when he’s wrong and call you on your bullshit (in a kind way). Rejoice! This decade’s sparkly vampire appears to be the thoughtful, sensitive dork! The romance here is gratifyingly healthy.
Another thing that I love about this book is its format. Twinkle writes each chapter as a letter to a famous female filmmaker, and her voice is witty but also sweet and engaging. In its better moments, this book really reminded me of E. Lockhart's Ruby Oliver series – it’s such a nice mix of high school drama and more serious topics like feminism and representation.
Where this book lost me was when it stopped being so realistic and started being much more…twinkly. When everyone started sincerely apologizing to each other (even when it was completely out of character), holding hands, watching rosy-hued film montages, and singing kumbaya…this felt way more like a fairy tale than realistic fiction. Friendships end sometimes. Anger can destroy relationships, but sometimes we all just need to GET ANGRY. I wish this had ended a bit more realistically.
However, I think that there are a million teens ready and waiting for this book. My students loved When Dimple Met Rishi, and I think they’ll love this one even more. Twinkle is sweet and quirky, and I know her romance with awkward Sahil will launch a thousand ships.
At sixteen, Twinkle dreams of becoming a filmmaker who cracks the glass ceiling for women of color and inspires other girls to aim high. Inside her mind, she’s a powerful director, bringing her vision to life. On the outside, she’s the quiet girl who can’t ever seem to stand up for herself: not to her supposed BFF Maddie who’s been abandoning her more and more, not to her years-long crush, Neil, who calls her by the wrong name, and especially not to her workaholic parents who don’t seem to care about her dreams. When Neil’s shy and nerdy twin, Sahil, offers to produce her debut film for the student showcase, she decides to finally share her voice with the world, and she finds herself falling for Sahil more and more in the process.
There are no brooding boys in this book, no creepy sleep-watching, no subtle pressuring. Instead of your beauty makes me barely able to maintain control, we get your beauty inspires me to maintain healthy boundaries and respectfully listen to your thoughts and opinions. Sahil will fill your days with tiny, thoughtful kindnesses and vulnerable honesty. He’ll apologize when he’s wrong and call you on your bullshit (in a kind way). Rejoice! This decade’s sparkly vampire appears to be the thoughtful, sensitive dork! The romance here is gratifyingly healthy.
Another thing that I love about this book is its format. Twinkle writes each chapter as a letter to a famous female filmmaker, and her voice is witty but also sweet and engaging. In its better moments, this book really reminded me of E. Lockhart's Ruby Oliver series – it’s such a nice mix of high school drama and more serious topics like feminism and representation.
Where this book lost me was when it stopped being so realistic and started being much more…twinkly. When everyone started sincerely apologizing to each other (even when it was completely out of character), holding hands, watching rosy-hued film montages, and singing kumbaya…this felt way more like a fairy tale than realistic fiction. Friendships end sometimes. Anger can destroy relationships, but sometimes we all just need to GET ANGRY. I wish this had ended a bit more realistically.
However, I think that there are a million teens ready and waiting for this book. My students loved When Dimple Met Rishi, and I think they’ll love this one even more. Twinkle is sweet and quirky, and I know her romance with awkward Sahil will launch a thousand ships.
Cute story. The end was a little too “perfect” for my taste.
There is so much to like here. I LOVED the format on this, which is primarily letters from Twinkle to her favorite female filmmakers. I thought the friendship challenges, as well as the rom-com angle, worked well. And most of all, that ending was excellent. It took up a thread I'd kind of forgotten about in the book and put a nice bow on it. Sweet and light, with a girl passionate about filmmaking and feminism, with a badass grandma in her life.
I didn't quite love this as much as Dimple. It maybe wasn't edited quite as tightly. But I didn't care that much, since I was in and in and in.
Pass to readers who want something fun, something which is also funny, and a story about a girl who wants to make a name for herself in filmmaking and does so with the help of a boy who may or may not be right for her (...and who may indeed be brothers with the boy of her dreams). This is all about her talent, though; it's not about how he saves her. He's simply a collaborator and coconspirator.
I didn't quite love this as much as Dimple. It maybe wasn't edited quite as tightly. But I didn't care that much, since I was in and in and in.
Pass to readers who want something fun, something which is also funny, and a story about a girl who wants to make a name for herself in filmmaking and does so with the help of a boy who may or may not be right for her (...and who may indeed be brothers with the boy of her dreams). This is all about her talent, though; it's not about how he saves her. He's simply a collaborator and coconspirator.
This was a really cute, super fast read!
Some parts were admittedly predictable, but Twinkle was a fun character to read and root for. I'm also a big fan of epistolary novels so this was fun for me, but I do wish there were more notes/emails/texts from some of the other characters, just to give the story a little more depth.
Some parts were admittedly predictable, but Twinkle was a fun character to read and root for. I'm also a big fan of epistolary novels so this was fun for me, but I do wish there were more notes/emails/texts from some of the other characters, just to give the story a little more depth.
I am absolutely in love with this book. It made me travel along with the story.
I could imagine everything that’s happening with twinkle. The cute little love story made me blush. The friendship, the love, the understanding, chatting, email exchanges, text messages were so real. I felt like it was happening in my classroom.
The author has described everything really perfectly. I want to read the other two novels of the author as soon as possible. The book not only Depicted a love story but also the understanding between friends, achieving goals etc. it’s a must read according to me. Five on five stars.
I could imagine everything that’s happening with twinkle. The cute little love story made me blush. The friendship, the love, the understanding, chatting, email exchanges, text messages were so real. I felt like it was happening in my classroom.
The author has described everything really perfectly. I want to read the other two novels of the author as soon as possible. The book not only Depicted a love story but also the understanding between friends, achieving goals etc. it’s a must read according to me. Five on five stars.
This was a cute YA story that reminded me why I still read YA as an adult.
The characters were strong, and I liked he arcs each of them took over the course of the story. I was actually about to give up on Twinkle (and the story as a whole) about halfway through, but I am glad I stuck it out and watched Twinkle grow and change. Through there entire first half of the story, she seemed so self involved and rude, I didn’t think I could handle her as a protagonist.
It’s hard not to compare this to When Dimple Met Rishi, because the two share the same sweet love story while also showing young women who want to change the world with their ideas. I enjoyed them both for being exactly the type of book I wanted to read when I was he age of the characters.
The characters were strong, and I liked he arcs each of them took over the course of the story. I was actually about to give up on Twinkle (and the story as a whole) about halfway through, but I am glad I stuck it out and watched Twinkle grow and change. Through there entire first half of the story, she seemed so self involved and rude, I didn’t think I could handle her as a protagonist.
It’s hard not to compare this to When Dimple Met Rishi, because the two share the same sweet love story while also showing young women who want to change the world with their ideas. I enjoyed them both for being exactly the type of book I wanted to read when I was he age of the characters.
Last year everyone was raving about When Dimple Met Rishi and although I never picked it up because I don't often find myself reaching for cute contemporary romances, I decided it was finally time to give the author a try with the recent release of From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon. In retrospect, I probably waited for the wrong book because the reviews of her debut seem to be universally better than this followup, but this is still a cute story about a teenage girl, Twinkle, who is making a film with Sahil, the twin brother of her crush, Neil. When Twinkle starts to receive emails from a mysterious "N", she's convinced it's Neil and all her dreams are about to come true. The only problem is, she's already falling for Sahil.
The weirdest thing about From Twinkle, With Love is that it's actually written as letters to Twinkle's favourite female directors. I didn't even realize this at first because I was listening to the audiobook, but apparently Twinkle has a photographic memory for details. There's also some text conversations in there, and while I love mixed media formats, they were completely unnecessary. I wish that Menon had just told the story using a straightforward, first person perspective. Still, the writing was very charming with some funny moments. The pacing is great, and I also really loved the way that Menon explored friendships and what it was like for Twinkle wanting to be popular at school. Even though From Twinkle, With Love wasn't perfect, I'm glad I read something outside of my comfort zone because I loved Twinkle's honest voice and I can definitely see myself picking up another book by Menon in the future.
The weirdest thing about From Twinkle, With Love is that it's actually written as letters to Twinkle's favourite female directors. I didn't even realize this at first because I was listening to the audiobook, but apparently Twinkle has a photographic memory for details. There's also some text conversations in there, and while I love mixed media formats, they were completely unnecessary. I wish that Menon had just told the story using a straightforward, first person perspective. Still, the writing was very charming with some funny moments. The pacing is great, and I also really loved the way that Menon explored friendships and what it was like for Twinkle wanting to be popular at school. Even though From Twinkle, With Love wasn't perfect, I'm glad I read something outside of my comfort zone because I loved Twinkle's honest voice and I can definitely see myself picking up another book by Menon in the future.
Sandhya Menon describes From Twinkle, with Love as the "spiritual successor" to her debut novel When Dimple Met Rishi and it is easy to see why this is a fitting description. Both novels feature charming and diverse characters. Both protagonists are passionate about their crafts--film directing and web developing, respectively-- and realize their love for the male main characters as the romantic leads help them complete projects that will pave a path for their future careers. Both characters ultimately aim to empower others.
From Twinkle, with Love is a fun read with just the right amount of angst-- angst that promises that the ending will ultimately be a happy one-- for a young adult novel full of fluff. Yet, the novel also has its own clever points. It is an epistolary novel, which cohesively emphasizes how Twinkle's own film is a feminist retelling of the 1931 classic film Dracula. The narrative form is a refreshing one for the genre, and serves to highlight how shockingly and humorously emotionally unperceptive the protagonist can be, despite being an insightful director and being paired with a character who demonstrates a rare trait in YA fiction: the ability to maturely communicate his own feelings.
Overall, I enjoyed From Twinkle, with Love because of its careful balance of maintaining and reversing key tropes within YA. I am eagerly waiting for Menon's upcoming YA novel There's Something About Sweetie.
“Geeks are smart and talented and passionate. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
I still love Sandhya Menon’s writing style. She’s so good at writing such adorable love stories! This was such a fun book to read. I had a hard time connecting with Twinkle at times because she kept annoying me with how obsessed she was about being part of the popular crowd. She was also pretty mean at times. I did really love Sahil though. He was so cute and dorky and sweet. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
I still love Sandhya Menon’s writing style. She’s so good at writing such adorable love stories! This was such a fun book to read. I had a hard time connecting with Twinkle at times because she kept annoying me with how obsessed she was about being part of the popular crowd. She was also pretty mean at times. I did really love Sahil though. He was so cute and dorky and sweet. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot.