I won a free copy on Goodreads thanks to FirstReads in exchange for an honest review.
Spoilers ahead. Get lost if you actually want to like this book. I don't want to ruin it for you.
This book was pretty hollow.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't necessarily <i>bad</i> or hurtful or a waste of time... per se. It just wasn't much of anything. It wasn't deep enough to earn the heartfelt blurbs on the front and back covers from a bunch of different celebrities who knew the famous fashion designer turned author. It definitely feels like Rachel Roy used her celebrity to get her daughter's book published, is all I'm saying.
Before I get into my nitpicking, I just want to say that the actual writing style was pretty decent. There was never a point while I was reading where I wanted to put the book down or toss it at my wall in frustration. The writing has a TON of potential. It just isn't quite there yet.
This book needs more editing almost as much as I need a better social life.
Keep in mind that my copy was an ARC, therefore the problems I found in the book may have been taken out before publication.
But anywhoozle, I had some ISSUES.
1. Minor logic issues - Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's impossible to have a 13.5 hour time difference. Pretty sure time zones are hours apart, not half hours. Also, at one point it was stated that the main character last visited India 5 years ago. However, after that, they keep saying that the last time she was there she introduced her cousin to the Jonas Brothers in 2010. If this book was written in 2018 and published in 2019, than "5 years ago" should have been 2013 or 2014. No Jonas Brothers required. Which brings me to my next problem.
2. WAY TOO MANY JONAS BROTHER JOKES - That weren't even funny the first time. I shit you not, Nick Jonas is mentioned in this book more than 10 times, possibly upwards of 20. It was pretty irritating and it made me feel like I should have just read a book about Nick Jonas, since he was clearly supposed to be the most interesting thing about this book. Obviously, the author had a bit of a Jo Bro obsession back in the day. I feel ya girl. Me too. But I was more of a Joe Jonas girl myself.
3. Characters flatter than my ass - Pretty much all of the characters, especially the side characters were some of the most one dimensional ones I've ever seen. Not much depth to any of them. For instance, one character was a bit of a bigot, and that's all she was. The Guru was like a sage, with less personality than white bread, whose only purpose was to give (very obvious) advice. The MC's best friend was a sexually aggressive lesbian, and that's all she was. I could go on but I won't since I'm boring myself.
4. Jokes cornier than my teeth - I like my contemporary YA reads peppered with a little humor. I have to give this book a WELL, YOU TRIED sticker because there were obvious attempts at jokes made throughout the book. I just didn't find the jokes very funny. There was one pun I thought was cute though, so I'll share it with the rest of the class.
"HEDGEHOGS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SHARE THE HEDGE."
That was it kids. The best line of the book. Does that tell you what you need to know about it?
5. Setting was an afterthought - I think that the choice of setting could have led to some absolutely astounding atmosphere. A beautiful Indian temple. Those words alone could inspire a million stunning images in my brain. However, my brain had to do all the imagining because there was almost no descriptive imagery in this book. Which is a real shame because I've never been to India, probably never will, and this book could have taken me there.
6. Is this Groundhog's Day or... - For the majority of the book, the same things happened day after day once she got to the temple. I get it. She has a routine but YAWN. How to be the main character Raya Liston: Wake up. Pray. Peel potatoes and judge people. Teach a kid how to read with all the enthusiasm of a deceased lima bean. Kiss a guy with less swag than your mom. Eat dinner. Sleep. Repeat. That's it. You're good to go.
7. Holy Hell - This book has a motherfucking awful lot of fucking swearing for a book set in a goddamn Holy place. Shit. Not to mention that one time when they have sex in a sacred garden right in front of a Holy statue that her grandma used to pray to. Classy as fuck.
8. If I could gaze into the future - you might think this book would be a breeze. (sorry. all the disney channel references in this book got me rememberin' the good old days.) What I'm trying to say here is that this book is WOW SO PREDICTABLE. I'm not even going to worry about this being a spoiler because if you couldn't see what I'm about to say coming, than you're probably too blind to read this review anyway, let alone an entire book, bless your soul. It was so obvious that she would want to become a teacher. It was so obvious that whatever his name was would be the love interest. It was so obvious that the man her grandma was talking about in her letters was the grandpa. Everything was so obvious, I was wondering if I was reading this book or if I was just making it up myself as I went along.
9. The author is madly in love with the main character - and thinks you should be too. Here we have another case of the too perfect MC (that is probably just the author inserting herself into the story but I don't know her personally so don't @me, okay). I swear to bajeezus everyone in this book was acting like everyone else sucked but Raya was God's golden cookie. If one more person kisses this main character's ass I swear to gOd i'M gOnNA riOT.
10. Main premise? - Pfft. Forget about that. Let's just put that there to look pretty on the blurb. So the set up in this book was that after Raya's grandma dies, she and her cousin want to go on some magical quest to look for some mysterious items that the grandma told them on her death bed to look for. ...O....kay... That could have been iNteReStiNG. I guess. Maybe. That's not what actually happens though. So no worries. The authors must have just put that in there as a red herring or something. It's all good. Once they get to the temple, I swear this brat spends no time with her cousin actually doing what they went there to do.
10. Subsection b) Main premise pt 2. - That epic retelling of an Indian love story? I'm still waiting on that. The actual story that they were referring to was easily 10.8 thousand times more interesting than this loosely based retelling. The resemblance to the two stories was thinner than Eugenia Cooney.
11. All that love interests need are good looks, right? - Cuz that's all this guy's got going for him anyway. He was honestly just a bag of meat. They should have just set the girl up with a set of pouty lips on a stick. She would have been just as happy and probably better off. And don't get me started on the chemistry, or lack thereof. These two went from lust to FAKE LOVE faster than I go from dinner to dessert. They were about as cute a couple as an eggplant and a goldfish and had even less in common. To say that this love affair was shallow would be almost as big an understatement as saying that this review is disgustingly long-winded.
12. All that Indians need in order to be Indian are brown skin, right? - Cuz that's about as Indian as the Indian characters got in this book. They. All. Acted. American. American slang? Yeah, that screams authentic Indian culture. Speaking 99.99% of your lines in English? Correct. Another common Indian habit. Where the bloody tooting stroopwaffle is all the culture? 911. I would like to report a crime. I have been robbed of what could have been a fantastic cultural experience. I'm white enough as it is. I don't need this book making me feel any whiter, thank you.
76. Uneven pacing - The first 100 pages are set at a pretty good pace. It gave you time to get to know the character and the situations in a fair amount of time. Just enough detail but not enough to bog you down or slow down the story. Then the middle chunk sped up a bit, not so bad, but still too fast for you to get attached to any side characters or get invested deeply enough into the plot. The last part was laughably rushed. Someone was facing a deadline or just stopped caring by that point. Just saying.
143. My biggest qualm - I'm going to get a little serious for a second to wrap up this monster of a review. My final issue is the almost cavalier way that the issue of sex trafficking was handled in this book. At one point, a little girl goes missing and it is suspected that she was taken by human traffickers. This came after a pathetically melodramatic reveal of one of the flat side characters admitting that she had been trafficked herself. The MC's reaction to that was so weak. Almost zero emotions were conveyed in the writing. It was like: "OMG, that's horrible. Wanna go get a chai latte?" Bitch, were you even listening? This is bad. Very bad. A little girl is missing and while you do show that you care enough to kinda sorta go looking for her, you all sure give up WAY TOO EASILY. I've looked for a missing pencil longer than these characters spent looking for a missing human being, I swear to GOOPLA! This issue was handled way too trivially and it deserved better and more serious treatment.
If you've made it this far with my review, CONGRATS! You deserve a cookie! Now go out there and read something good, you beautiful creature, you