3.5 stars

I received this book via NetGalley from publishers/author in exchange for an honest review.

Twinkle Mehra knows exactly what she wants to be when she leaves school - a world class female filmmaker and she's getting her start by directing a gender-swapped Dracula for a school festival. Twinkle's story is told through a series of letters she writes to her favourite female filmmakers (instead of a diary or journal) and we follow her as she tries to stop being the invisible girl in school, deals with a crush, and starts to possibly fall in love with someone she never expected.

This was a sweet contemporary book that is perfect for some summer days and speedy reading. Twinkle is very infectious, and fun and it's easy to get on board with her enthusiasm for film, and all things movies.

I enjoyed this story even though there were parts that were quite cliched (the kiss in the cabin in the woods in the rain). Sandhya Menon has a great way of bringing in some of the old romantic movie cliches into her books and making them work in fresh ways. Sometimes you can't help but be swept up in the simple chemistry of two characters and Twinkle and Sahil definitely had that. I also really like that Sandhya's books don't drag out kisses and romantic feeling outbursts until the very end of the book. Twinkle and Sahil kissed about 40% though and then they built up their relationship for the rest of the book, with some bumps along the way of course, but I really like that as I think it's realistic and healthy. I found Dimple and Rishi's relationship the same.

Twinkle's friendship and popularity woes is probably something that a lot of teenage readers may identify with,and I definitely felt really sorry for her at times, and infuriated by other characters. I did want to shake Twinkle sometimes and prove to her she was better with Skid, Aaron and Sahil then with Maddie and Hannah. Maddie was a very annoying friend at times, and while you can almost understand her actions, a lot of what she did was wrong and mean and I don't think she really gave Twinkle a proper apology at the end.

Twinkle did act a bit badly at times too but she was also so naive at times in this book, almost a little bit too naive to be believable. It was so obvious from the start who her email admirer was, and come on - in what world would it have ever been Neil? I also found it a bit unbelievable that she would be 16/17 years old and not have a cell phone. She had some secondhand cameras but no cell phone?

It's also made fairly obvious at times in the book that her mother is suffering from depression following the death of Twinkle's grandmother, and Twinkle does not deal with this well at all - in fact, she deals with it very selfishly in blaming her mother for not wanting to spend time with her. It was odd to m that Twinkle wouldn't be more worried about her mother, especially when she would go off by herself for hours and no-one would know where she was. I don't think this was addressed as well as it could have been in the book (and personally, I don't think a trip to India is going to magically fiix her mom's feelings, and low thoughts).

I really did enjoy this though. It was what I wanted in a contemporary and I will continue to read anything Sandhya Menon writes because I've loved both her books so far.