Kismat Connection

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In this charming YA debut, a girl who’s determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into a relationship experiment—not knowing that he has been in love with her for years. Kismat Connection is a YA contemporary story devoted to exploring fate and influence. For Madhuri and Arjun they have fates in the works. Prophecies about their lives. Both of them see their fates differently, Arjun using it to guide him and reading into this future and who it might be. But for Madhuri, she’s convinced to not let it have power over her leading her to this fake dating situation to defy her fate. But throughout this ‘experiment’ will Madhuri and Arjun learn more about fate than they thought? Kismat Connectionis a wonderful debut YA romance novel with Indian culture woven into the story. I absolutely adored this book, and I can’t wait to read more by Devarajan. The novel was impressive in general, but especially so because it is the author’s first book (published at age 21 I might add). I was so excited to hear that she has more projects in the works as well! As much as I love the friends-to-lovers trope, my favorite aspect of this book is how developed the characters are in relation to characters outside their romance. This book reminds me of The Hate U Give not in tone, but in the way that Devarajan dedicates time and care to the full, complex matrix of human interaction and how one relationship affects a person’s interactions with another. The characters don’t feel like dolls that smooch at Devarajan’s command. They feel independent and alive.

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. 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: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun’s feelings for her are a variable she didn’t account for. go on 1 date per week. if no actual dating occurs, then the relationship was not a real attempt. both parties must converse at least once a day. KISMAT CONNECTION doesn’t release until June 13, 2023. As of December 2022, I have now read this book THREE TIMES. Let me tell you why.Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Inkyard Press through BookishFirst in exchange for a fair and honest review. And finally, KISMAT is a love letter to love. Reading Arjun and Madhuri’s journeys to each other was such a treat. I could not stop rooting for them as Devarajan explored their nuanced histories and relationships for one another. Watching them grow to be the Best Possible Person for one another was a real joy. Finally, I really enjoyed the way Devarajan incorporated Indian culture. She did so in many ways, and I particularly loved that Bharatanatyam was such a huge part of Madhuri’s identity.

the weakest plot contrivance was definitely the "kismat experiment" thing. if madjuri truly wanted to prove the family curse wrong, she would've dated someone who she didn't like from the beginning. her "hypothesis" is not a hypothesis and she's supposed to be a stem girlie. arjun and madjuri's astrology readings directly contradict each other so they have "opposing hypotheses" for the experiment, but i don't remember what that means or why it even matters. i think if the author had committed to either the astrology reading bit or the curse/experiment bit, the book would've felt more focused. if you're committing to the experiment bit, then i think it would've been fun to have madhuri write out a classic high school lab report format. Ananya Devarajan is in her fourth and final year at the University of California, Irvine, where she is pursuing a major in Neurobiology and Behavior as well as a minor in English. After graduation, she will be attending medical school at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Middletown, New York. Like many of her characters, Ananya is a second-generation Indian American young adult.

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i wanted to love this book so much, i even forced myself to finish it in hopes that it would turn out to be good in the end. sadly, it didn’t. This collection of interconnected contemporary YA short stories, written by Gen Z authors, explores different parts of "the college experience," from questioning your major to questioning your identity. 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". In this charming YA debut, a girl who’s determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into an experimentalrelationship—not knowing that he has been in love with her for years.