After reading and loving When Dimple Met Rishi last summer and finding it warmed the cockles of my lil’ Desi heart, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Sandhya Menon’s next book, meaning I was delighted to receive an eARC of From Twinkle, With Love.
The book is about an aspiring filmmaker, Twinkle, who is determined to work her way from social obscurity into the upper echelons of her school’s social sphere, and hopefully dating her crush and winning back her estranged best friend while she does so. Her plans are thrown for a loop when she starts working on a movie project with fellow film enthusiast — and twin brother to her crush — Sahil.
I was at first concerned that the book might just turn out to be a rehash of WDMR, because at first glance, there are a lot of similarities — a girl with a very specific passion works on a project with a boy, romance happens, there is friendship drama at the side, and a couple of Bollywood references thrown in for good measure. I was pleased to discover that despite evident similarities, this definitely stood out as its own stories, and I wound up loving it.
First things first, just as with WDMR, the Desi/Indian-American rep that this book provided made me so so happy. I’m not used to seeing characters like me represented in books, particularly not in YA contemporaries, and certainly not in stories meant to be fluffy romcoms rather than morose examinations of “the Immigrant experience.” Menon did a fabulous job of treating an Indian-American perspective as the norm rather than the exception, and it was great to see casual references to Hinduism, Hindi dialogue, and conventions of NRI communities strewn throughout. Twinkle’s Indian identity is prevalent and constant (I loved that one of my own favourite directors, Gurinder Chadda, was referenced throughout) without this being a book about being Indian, and I loved that.
Also wonderful was the central romance. It was adorable and fluffy and you got to see both Twinkle and Sahil develop as characters throughout. Some of the barriers to the relationship felt a little convoluted at times, and often I was left mentally screaming at Twinkle because it was so blatantly obvious a) how exactly some of her decisions regarding Sahil were going to backfire, b) how ill-thought out those decisions were, and c) how easily those decisions could be avoided. The frustrations were there, but I was generally able to excuse them because of the fact that, whilst infuriating, they didn’t seem out of character for a young girl, and they added a dimension of believable conflict and confusion to an overall very fluffy story about a girl navigating romance for the first time. I liked the way Menon managed to make the romance develop over time — you could see Twinkle’s feelings for Sahil change and deepen over the course of the novel, and it was amusing to see her burgeoning attraction to him manifest in what was essentially a gradual but definite “…oh no, he’s hot” moment. And one of my absolute favourite devices from WDMR makes a reappearance — HINDI TERMS OF ENDEARMENT!!! Just as Rishi calling Dimple “lajawaab” gave me heart palpitations each time, so did Sahil calling Twinkle “chamatkaar (also here’s a fun easter egg for any non-Hindi speakers, but one possible translation of the word “chamatkaar,” though not the one used in the book, is Twinkle).”
Finally, much to my own surprise, there were two elements of this book that I actually /preferred/ to WDMR. Firstly, the way Twinkle’s passion for filmmaking was handled. Dimple’s love for coding, despite forming the backdrop of the book, was sort of glossed over. Twinkle’s filmmaking, however, became inextricably linked to the essence of the book and I loved it. The novel itself was epistolary, told in the form of letters Twinkle writes to her favourite female directors, which I thought was such a creative way of telling the story. I even found myself getting more interested in Film Studies because Twinkle’s enthusiasm was so pervasive. The development of the film project formed the backbone of the plot, and even some of the biggest conflicts and moments of drama were seamlessly linked to the film. Twinkle and Sahil’s relationship was that much more charming for springing from a friendship formed through a mutual love of film. Secondly, the subplots and side characters were even more engaging in FTWL than in WDMR. It’s no secret how much I adored reading about Dimple’s and Rishi’s families — they were such lively, funny, and engaging figures that had me screaming because they were just so relatable and real as representations of Indian families. Twinkle’s family, however, were an altogether more somber presence in the book — her Dadi is warm and funny, but her father and especially her mother form an unusually dark part of the book. Despite being less “fun” to read about than Dimple’s parents, I found Twinkle’s parents’ backstory a little heartbreak, and it added a layer of depth to the story and made some of Twinkle’s more impulsive or rash behaviours less frustrating and more touching for the way that they revealed how her troubled family life affected her. Twinkle’s friends, meanwhile, were much more prevalent players than Dimple’s were. Twinkle’s relationship with her on-and-off best friend Maddie formed the major secondary arc of the plot, and I found myself almost as invested in the development of that friendship as I was in the main romance. I really enjoyed the more minor characters as well — Victoria was oddly charming and her budding friendship with Twinkle was one of the sweetest parts of the novel; Sahil’s friends were hilarious too, and their group chat conversations made me snort.
I only have one main criticism of the book, and it’s as much to do with me as with the writing, and it’s just that Twinkle reads as quite young. It was a little jarring to begin with, especially because I’ve recently only been reading either adult novels or very intense YA, and also because I’m the same age as the protagonists in WDMR (I actually read it while I, like Dimple and Rishi, was travelling the summer before starting university), whereas I’m a few years older than the characters in this book. As such I had trouble deciding whether Twinkle’s voice was age-appropriate for a 16 y/o and I’d just forgotten how I sounded at that age, or if she did actually read as closer to 13, but again, I suspect a reader a couple of years younger than me probably won’t notice. It wasn’t a huge issue though, I got used to it quite quickly, and the characters matured as the plot went on. The only other tiny little critique is that Twinkle wanted to be the Alia Bhatt to her crush’s Shahid Kapoor when really, Alia Bhatt should be paired off with Siddharth Malhotra. But that’s just my opinion.
Anyway, in case you couldn’t tell, I absolutely loved this book and I highly recommend you pick this up next time you’re looking for a sweet coming-of-age romance with a healthy sprinkling of film references both Holly- and Bollywood.
Rating: ****1/2
From Twinkle, With Love hits shelves May 22nd, 2018.
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