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From Twinkle, with Love
by Sandhya Menon
Twinkle Mehta is an aspiring filmmaker who has nothing to lose when an opportunity to make a film for her school festival falls in her lap. She had been growing more and more distant from her best friend Hannah, who had found a new rich, popular friend and had begun to ignore Twinkle. So Twinkle goes for it, partnering with Sahil Roy who acts as her producer, to create a version of Dracula with the genders reversed. As they create their film, Twinkle and Sahil become closer and closer.
Of course, we need a "BUT." The "but" in this story is Twinkle's longtime crush on Sahil's twin brother Neil. And then she starts getting emails from a secret admirer who signs them "N." The biggest barrier to Twinkle's happiness, though, is herself. Twinkle is obsessed with the social hierarchies in her school, calling herself a groundling and popular kids feather hat people. So as she begins to find herself interacting more and more with the popular kids because of her film, she becomes more and more obsessed with "showing them," leading, of course, to a falling out with Sahil, and with Hannah. Twinkle realizes her mistakes, and predictably repairs all the bridges she burns by the end of the book.
This is a pretty straightforward contemporary teen romance, but there are some refreshing things about it: Twinkle's feminism, Sahil's support, Sahil's friends whose personalities seemed fresh and inventive, and the depiction of a working class Indian family just trying to make it in America. This book had many similarities to Menon's first book, When Dimple Met Rishi, with a headstrong Indian girl whose arrogance got in the way of her own happiness, which in the end, she realizes and then fixes the situation. I'd like to see another attempt from Menon, who brings an important cultural perspective to the YA genre, that doesn't follow this well worn formula. Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Of course, we need a "BUT." The "but" in this story is Twinkle's longtime crush on Sahil's twin brother Neil. And then she starts getting emails from a secret admirer who signs them "N." The biggest barrier to Twinkle's happiness, though, is herself. Twinkle is obsessed with the social hierarchies in her school, calling herself a groundling and popular kids feather hat people. So as she begins to find herself interacting more and more with the popular kids because of her film, she becomes more and more obsessed with "showing them," leading, of course, to a falling out with Sahil, and with Hannah. Twinkle realizes her mistakes, and predictably repairs all the bridges she burns by the end of the book.
This is a pretty straightforward contemporary teen romance, but there are some refreshing things about it: Twinkle's feminism, Sahil's support, Sahil's friends whose personalities seemed fresh and inventive, and the depiction of a working class Indian family just trying to make it in America. This book had many similarities to Menon's first book, When Dimple Met Rishi, with a headstrong Indian girl whose arrogance got in the way of her own happiness, which in the end, she realizes and then fixes the situation. I'd like to see another attempt from Menon, who brings an important cultural perspective to the YA genre, that doesn't follow this well worn formula. Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.