3.5/5


content warnings: sexism, mentions of racism and homophobia
representation: Indian-American protagonist and main characters, Japanese-American main character, gay Black side character, bisexual side character, interracial m/m side relationship

“Did you hear I’ve tossed and turned without you since you walked away from me?
Did you hear I’m wondering if you’ll ever stop hating me?
Did you hear I don’t care about your brother beyond the fact that he’s your brother?
Did you hear I’m falling in love with you?”

It's decided: my first tattoo is going to be big, bold letters on my forehead saying I LOVE SANDHYA MENON. Okay, maybe a tattoo is a bit dramatic, but I'm definitely going to get a T-shirt or tote bag that says that at some point!

This my third Sandhya Menon book, her sophomore novel, and while it's my least favourite of the three I've read, it's still leaps and bounds better than most YA romances I've read.

From Twinkle, With Love follows aspiring filmmaker Twinkle Mehra who's accepted that, at least for the rest of high school, she's going to blend into the background. Until one day Sahil Roy (the twin brother of her longtime crush, Neil) asks her if she wants to make a film with him to show at a Festival. At the same time, she begins getting emails from a secret admirer called N who she's sure is Neil. But as she continues to work on the film with Sahil she starts to realise that maybe she's developing feelings for a different brother.

This is mostly going to be a gush so I'm going to get my big criticism out the way: I didn't really care about the romance. Which is so frustrating because normally I love Sandhya Menon romances! Dimple/Rishi and Ashish/Sweetie are two of my all-time favourite book couples, but I just couldn't get into it with this book. Part of this might be that unlike with her other two books, FTWL is much more complicated romance-wise. Twinkle's heart is being tugged several different ways, and even though I thought it was pretty obvious who she was going to end up with I still couldn't get super invested.

That out of the way, let's talk about the things I super loved. Number one, the structure. When Dimple Met Rishi and There's Something About Sweetie are both told in dual-POVs from both main characters and it's all very straight-forward. This, however, is told almost entirely from Twinkle's perspective; the only time we get any other perspective is seeing the texts between Sahil and his two friends, Aaron and Skid. It's not just the mostly-one-POV that makes this different though; Everything we read from Twinkle's perspective is from her diary which she formats as if she's writing letters to various female filmmakers.

I love how organic Twinkle's love of film and especially female filmmakers was. It's clearly the thing she's most passionate about but it never felt like it was her entire personality. Sandhya Menon is either just as obsessive as Twinkle or a very good researcher because all the references felt extremely authentic. I especially loved how specific the women Twinkle would write to was. She would write to Nora Ephron when she was wondering about boy-girl friendships; she would write to Sofia Coppola when she was feeling like an outsider; she would write to Ava DuVernay when she was talking about her place as a woman of colour in the film industry.

(Also, every director Twinkle writes a letter to? You should watch all their films, they're amazing. (Claire Denis' are very weird but you'll get used to it.))

The thing I absolutely loved the most about this, though, was the friendships! We all know that Sandhya Menon's great at writing friendships, but I think she really outdoes herself here. One of the main elements of this book is Twinkle's relationship with her maybe-best-friend Maddie which has been on the rocks ever since Maddie started hanging out with a different group who don't seem to like Twinkle. Their complicated relationship was easily my favourite part of this book and I was way more invested in that than the romance.

Twinkle's development as a character was also amazing. We so rarely get to see unlikable female characters in YA and Sandhya Menon really is one of the best. Twinkle isn't mean but she can be, something we see more as the book goes on, but her shitty behaviour doesn't go unchecked. It's acknowledged as valid but people will also call her out if she's gone too far. This goes for a lot of the characters, actually; everyone has good reasons for doing the crappy things they do but other characters also make sure they know that they don't have to put up with it.

Some people sleep on their sides, some people sleep on their backs, and some people sleep on Sandhya Menon's books. If you're one of those people, stop! Go pick up one of her books because they're the cream of the crop in terms of YA romance.