Madhuri gets her astrological chart read and finds out her year is going to suck, in all aspects of her life. Throw in her family curse of marrying the first man you ever date and this young scientist decides to make a little experiment. A dating experiment. Her and her best friend Arjun will date the rest of their senior year and then breakup when they graduate. They are best friends, only friends, so no hearts will be heart during the experiment… right?
We really don’t get a buildup of Madhuri and Arjun’s relationship. They start out as best friends with Arjun secretly in love Madhuri for years. Madhuri is constantly denying that she even likes him then like a switch she all of a sudden is in love with him. I also felt like a lot of the relationship building was done behind scenes. This could also be because it was hard to tell how much time went by between the scenes. We didn’t really get to see them grow their relationship, just them constantly having arguments about different things.
It is so important for the reader to get connected with the characters and while I did feel somewhat connected with Arjun, I just could not stand Madhuri. I was constantly wondering why Arjun would want to be with her. She was very selfish, and she whined about so many things. Arjun even said that he was nervous to talk to her about somethings because he was scared that she would just leave him. That’s just toxic. Arjun is also having to deal with his mother who is never home and constantly abandons Arjun. It’s really sad watching him have to go through this and watching him get his hopes up when his mother comes back.
Arjun and Madhuri both have the same culture and customs but they handle them very different. Arjun is proud of his culture while Madhuri is ashamed of it. And this makes sense because she was bullied multiple times about it. I just thought she was really rude to her mother when it came to some aspects of her culture. I think Madhuri could have handled it better. I was happy that near the end of the book she started to become more confident and she started to embrace her culture again. I actually started to like Madhuri near the end of the book. I thought that the culture talk throughout the book was very interesting. I loved getting to know more about the Indian culture and I even found myself looking things up after reading it in the book to try to understand more about it.
Overall I think this book would be really good for a younger audience. I’m not the biggest fan of just YA romance, but if YA romance is what you love then this book would be great for you. It’s a really cute book that talks about the pressure of being in high school and trying to get into college, as well as figuring out your first relationship (even if it’s a fake relationship with a contract) and throwing in cultural differences.
We really don’t get a buildup of Madhuri and Arjun’s relationship. They start out as best friends with Arjun secretly in love Madhuri for years. Madhuri is constantly denying that she even likes him then like a switch she all of a sudden is in love with him. I also felt like a lot of the relationship building was done behind scenes. This could also be because it was hard to tell how much time went by between the scenes. We didn’t really get to see them grow their relationship, just them constantly having arguments about different things.
It is so important for the reader to get connected with the characters and while I did feel somewhat connected with Arjun, I just could not stand Madhuri. I was constantly wondering why Arjun would want to be with her. She was very selfish, and she whined about so many things. Arjun even said that he was nervous to talk to her about somethings because he was scared that she would just leave him. That’s just toxic. Arjun is also having to deal with his mother who is never home and constantly abandons Arjun. It’s really sad watching him have to go through this and watching him get his hopes up when his mother comes back.
Arjun and Madhuri both have the same culture and customs but they handle them very different. Arjun is proud of his culture while Madhuri is ashamed of it. And this makes sense because she was bullied multiple times about it. I just thought she was really rude to her mother when it came to some aspects of her culture. I think Madhuri could have handled it better. I was happy that near the end of the book she started to become more confident and she started to embrace her culture again. I actually started to like Madhuri near the end of the book. I thought that the culture talk throughout the book was very interesting. I loved getting to know more about the Indian culture and I even found myself looking things up after reading it in the book to try to understand more about it.
Overall I think this book would be really good for a younger audience. I’m not the biggest fan of just YA romance, but if YA romance is what you love then this book would be great for you. It’s a really cute book that talks about the pressure of being in high school and trying to get into college, as well as figuring out your first relationship (even if it’s a fake relationship with a contract) and throwing in cultural differences.