Kismat Connection

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thank you to netgalley and inkyard press for providing me with an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. do you see my vision? in the book, she just writes out like, a hypothesis and a deadline. commit to the bit! Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family legacy. Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she’ll never fall for.

i think there's too many plot contrivances too early. within 2 chapters we have arjun's astrology reading and madhuri's astrology reading, but also madhuri's family "curse" and madhuri's "kismat experiment" to combat the family curse. it's too much. i knew what the author was going for and i still found myself confused on the intentions of everyone involved. (and it really was not that complicated. he loves her. she wants to break the family curse. it's not complicated.) Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide.arjun gets a very positive astrology reading, madhuri gets a very negative astrology reading. and then separately, madjuri has a family curse where the women always marry the first man they date. and to combat the curse, madjuri wants to not-fake-date arjun. it's real dating. but there is a deadline for when the relationship ends. it feels fake; she doesn't have feelings for him until she does, which is a normal trope for fake dating. but arjun has loved her for like, a decade. so it's not fake dating, it's not a fling where they're both into it until the deadline. it's this third weird gray area where i am not interested in what's happening because i know that arjun loves her and i know that madjuri needs to get over herself before they can be happy. but i am not interested in madhuri coming to terms with the family "curse". Madhuri and Arjun are a couple to root for with their nuanced love for and history with each other and I spent half the book crying for them, half internally yelling at them to just be together for real already while simultaneously swooning, and all of the book loving them with my entire heart.

In this charming YA debut, a girl who's determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into an experimental relationship-not knowing that he has been in love with her for years. 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. In this charming YA debut, a girl who’s determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into an experimental relationship—not knowing that he has been in love with her for years.I could not help but immediately fall in love with Arjun. The ways it is so clear he loves Madhuri, but doesn’t want to lose their friendship. Or the ways in which when we have a prophecy we think we might know who it is or what might happen, but it’s never entirely that simple. At the same time, Madhuri instantly stole my heart. My heart broke for the ways the bullying convinced her to internalize their racism and change her own passions. Kismat Connection exploring Madjuri’s struggles with her dancing and her own heritage got my heart in knots. the answer is everything. throughout the whole book we are only being told about what’s happening but it’s never shown. there was no development, neither in the characters nor in the plot. the fake dating lasted five seconds, i swear. madhuri and arjun are friends and arjun has feelings for madhuri that are unrequited. but, we get an insta love out of nowhere. their dialogue was so unnatural and something that no teen would say nowadays. it felt strained and i cringed the whole time. it’s obvious that the author tried a little too hard. i just couldn’t find one likeable character in this book and at that point i should’ve just given up on it completely. select a boy to attempt to date. boy needs to have the following requirements: is not racist, is not popular, has some common interests, understands the deadline, will not fall in love with me, i will not fall in love with him kismat connection is a sweet, charming story of self-discovery, family, embracing your culture, and accepting the love given to you in your life, even if it comes from unexpected places. while i adored the main characters (especially arjun), the shining light of this novel for me was the iyer family as a whole, whose love and acceptance knew no bounds or exceptions. although the characters in kismat connection experienced many various hardships, none of them did so alone, and throughout the story, ananya devarajan worked continuously to paint a warm, beautiful, and memorable portrait of love, family, and connection in all its forms.