a match made in mehendi by nandini bajpai

Noah is gay and it isn’t really mentioned how many in the larger context of the school know about him, but I liked that whoever did were very supportive. Her friendship with her BFF Noah is total goals and I loved how they encouraged and motivated each other all the time, but also gave space when one needed it. She is an amazing artist and I loved that her parents didn’t seem to have too much of a problem with that. She is a sweet but clumsy high school sophomore, who has this habit of falling over at inopportune times. And come on, the multiple mentions of samosas and pakodas and Limca just made me hungry, but unfortunately I didn’t have any handy to munch on. I think the only problem I had was with the main bully in the high school (I’m so over the mean girl trope) and while I’m sure that every school might have someone like that irl, I’m not sure we need more girl on girl hate in YA novels.Īnd obviously I thought the desi representation was amazing - right from the slightly nosy moms and aunts, the slight obsession with engineers and doctors, the descriptions of yummy food, the importance of wearing a turban as a Sikh, the differences between how the elders feel about mehendi being something sacred whereas the youngsters finding it unique and fun, the rituals and ceremonies - there are just so many little things which I may not even have noticed, because they were organically part of the story and the characters and I loved being in the middle of it all. Each chapter also has a lovely mehendi design and a quote from the MC’s family’s matchmaking guide, which I thought was excellent symbolism for the book as a whole. The pacing is very fast and I flew through the book so quickly that I didn’t even realize it was almost the end.

The setting of the high school was pretty realistic too and I liked that the author didn’t try too much to get the teenage voice right. I thought the author’s idea of combining the traditional Indian style of matchmaking with modern and technologically advanced dating apps was genius and it made for a very lovely story - while giving us the pros and cons of both methods. The writing is light hearted, fun, with lots of awkward and silly and adorable moments and on the whole, just some thorough entertainment. The one thing I could tell right from the first page is that I was gonna smile through the whole book. But I was delighted to finally get my library copy so that I can join in with my friends who have all loved it so much. And it didn’t help that I always seem to get rejected for ownvoices ARCs. I have been waiting to read this book for so long now that I’ve lost count. CW: bullying, public outing of a character

A match made in mehendi by nandini bajpai