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Review: Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar

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Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar

Rani Choudhury Must Die
Adiba Jaigirdar
Feiwel & Friends
Published November 12, 2024

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About Rani Choudhury Must Die

In this sapphic dual POV Young Adult romance by Adiba Jaigirdar, Meghna and Rani (ex-best-friends-turned-rivals) realize they’re dating the same guy, so they team up to beat and expose him at a big science competition!

Meghna Rahman is tired of constantly being compared to her infuriatingly perfect ex best friend now rival. Everyone, except, at least, her boyfriend Zak, seems to think that Rani Choudhury can do no wrong—even her own parents! It doesn’t help that Rani is always accepted into the Young Scientist Exhibition, while Meghna’s projects never make it. But this year, she finally has a chance at defeating Rani in something.

Rani Choudhury is tired of feeling like she doesn’t have much say in her life—not when it comes to how her mom wants her to look and act or how her parents encourage her to date incredibly charming close family friend Zak. She would much rather focus on her coding, especially once she places high enough at the Young Scientist Exhibition to go on to the European Young Scientist Exhibition.

When Meghna and Rani figure out that Zak has been playing them both, they decide to do something no one would see coming: they team up. They’ll compete in the EYSE as partners, creating an app that exposes cheaters and a project that exposes Zak. But with years of silence and pressure between them, working together will prove difficult. Especially once each girl starts to realize that the feelings they had for the other may have been more than platonic…

Hey, no one ever said science was easy!

My Review

So far, for me, this type of rivals-to-lovers romance is the sweet spot of Adiba Jaigirdar’s books. The tension between the characters is perfect, the cultural themes are immersive and engaging, and the romance leaves me swooning. I loved The Henna Wars and Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, and I will gladly put this one on the shelf right next to them.

The plot of Rani Choudhury Must Die starts off slowly and winds through a bit of setup before it really gets going. We learn about Meghna’s secret dating relationship and Rani’s relationship with the boy her parents expect her to marry… the same boy secretly dating Meghna. Yikes.

We also learn that Meghna and Rani have history. It’s unclear at first what happened and who, exactly, is to blame for the rift between the girls. It’s pretty clear that Meghna’s mental image of Rani differs from her real self, though, and I found myself intrigued by the difference.

It highlights the way that unresolved conflict can leave us with a specific, hurtful image of a person that doesn’t at all match who the person truly is. Yet, while we’re still nursing that hurt and anger, we can’t see that there is a difference. This delicate mining of nuance in relationships is one of my favorite components of Jaigirdar’s books. She does this so well, and her characters are so rich because of it.

The romance between Rani and Meghna is a very slow burn. I loved that, too. It honors the history between the two girls and the complexity of the circumstances that brought them together. I think it would have been hard to tell a compelling story in which they immediately hook up after discovering they’ve been dating the same boy. This really worked and lets readers hope for and root for the romance as it begins to blossom.

All in all, I had a great time reading this book. Fans of slow-burn romance, rivals to lovers, and/or STEM girls definitely do not want to miss this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
The story is set in Ireland. Meghna and Rani are from the same Bengali community in Ireland. Both are dating a boy and are romantically interested in girls.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Kissing between two girls.

Spiritual Content
References to cultural family events, holidays, and celebrations.

Violent Content
A boy manipulates and uses words to gaslight a girl.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Seven Percent of Ro Devereux

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Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
Ellen O’Clover
HarperTeen
Published January 17, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Seven Percent of Ro Devereux

A clever, charming, and poignant debut novel about a girl who must decide whether to pursue her dreams or preserve her relationships, including a budding romance with her ex-best friend, when an app she created goes viral.

Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.

Working with her neighbor, a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy. The app will even match users with their soul mates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.

Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soul mate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago. Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams.

Fans of Emma Lord and Alex Light will love this stand-alone contemporary novel with a masterful slow-burn romance at its core.

My Review

Okay, yes: I totally see the comparison to Emma Lord’s books with this one. It’s got big emotions, deep characters, and swoony love. All things I’ve experienced in Lord’s books, too.

And all things I loved about SEVEN PERCENT OF RO DEVEREUX.

It’s another book that made me absolutely weep. Ro grieves over the loss of a friend. She’s in anguish over the rift between her and her childhood bestie. (This is a friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story.)

I loved Ro’s relationship with her dad. They definitely do not see eye to eye on how she should proceed with the MASH app and even with her life after high school, but though he has to make some hard parenting decisions, he clearly loves and supports Ro through it all, even when he’s trying to warn her of bumps in the road he sees ahead for her.

I also loved Ro’s relationships with her friends, Maren and Miller. Her memories from her childhood and the transition to the present pulled me deep into the story and had me so invested in her relationship with Miller. And I couldn’t help loving Maren. She’s awesome, too.

All in all, I’d say this one was a big win for me. It’s a debut, so an author I’d never read before, and it’ll be a strong contender for favorite of the year, I believe.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Ro’s best friend Maren starts dating a girl.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Ro remembers a boy assaulting and attempting to rape her. Kissing between two girls. Kissing between boy and girl. A boy and girl spend a night together.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A violent crowd injures a boy.

Drug Content
At 15, Ro drank alcohol at a party.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of SEVEN PERCENT OF RO DEVEREUX in exchange for my honest review.


Review: Chaos of Now by Erin Jade Lange

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

Chaos of Now
Erin Jade Lange
Bloomsbury
Published on October 2, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Chaos of Now
Is it real if it happens online?

Life at Eli’s high school hasn’t been the same since his classmate Jordan died by suicide after being tirelessly bullied. Schools now have access to students’ online activities and students have less privacy than ever. Eli just wants to graduate—so he can get out of town, get away from his father’s embarrassingly young fiancée, and get himself a prestigious coding job. But Eli’s hacking skills get him roped into a vigilante website that—while subverting the school’s cybersnoops— seeks justice for Jordan and everyone else being bullied. Suddenly Eli finds himself in way over his head as his keystrokes start to have devastating consequences in the real world . . . This timely story from the author of Butter is a thrilling tale about the power of the internet, the young people who wield it, and the fine lines between bully and victim, justice and vengeance.

My Review
Chaos of Now took some directions I wasn’t expecting, and I really appreciated that about the story. I liked Isabel and Zack a lot, but Eli was a tougher sell for me. I didn’t like the kind of know-it-all attitude and his insensitivity to the people around him. That said, he grows a LOT as a character through the story, and by the end, I felt like I had a much stronger connection with him. I liked the way his relationship with Misty, his father’s girlfriend, changes over the course of the book.

I thought the topic of coding and of bullying online made for a really fascinating, intense read. At first I worried about the position the book would take. Eli had some really strong feelings about online freedom and the idea that people who don’t take precautions to seriously protect their data can’t be upset if someone accesses it. He learns that there are some definite flaws in his ideals when he faces unexpected consequences.

Sorry… I know that’s kind of vague. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. But I definitely liked that he has this shifting view of life online because of what he experiences through his relationships with Mouse and Seth in particular.

While this probably wasn’t my favorite book this year—it’s a bit of an out-of-the-box pick for me—I did enjoy reading it. I think fans of Leopoldo Gout’s The Game series will enjoy this book.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white. Eli has a crush on a Latino girl named Isabel.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used fairly frequently. Some slurs used by kids bullying another kid.

Romance/Sexual Content
Eli overhears a conversation about a girl taking a pregnancy test. Eli watches a video of a classmate doing a striptease down to her underwear. Eli’s dad’s girlfriend is a former stripper. He makes some insulting comments about her previous life. Some kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A boy hits Eli and slams him around in a bathroom. Eli describes witnessing a classmate light himself on fire and die by suicide.

Drug Content
Video footage shows a boy using steroids. In one scene teens drink alcohol from a flask and spoke pot.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: More than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer

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More Than We Can Tell
Brigid Kemmerer
Bloomsbury Children’s
Published on March 6, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About More Than We Can Tell
Rev Fletcher is battling the demons of his past. But with loving adoptive parents by his side, he’s managed to keep them at bay…until he gets a letter from his abusive father and the trauma of his childhood comes hurtling back.

Emma Blue spends her time perfecting the computer game she built from scratch, rather than facing her parents’ crumbling marriage. She can solve any problem with the right code, but when an online troll’s harassment escalates, she’s truly afraid.

When Rev and Emma meet, they both long to lift the burden of their secrets and bond instantly over their shared turmoil. But when their situations turn dangerous, their trust in each other will be tested in ways they never expected.

My Review
I loved Letters to the Lost, which was Kemmerer’s debut novel, and as soon as I heard that one of the characters from that story—Rev—would be starring in his own companion novel, I knew I had to get ahold of a copy. Then once I got the copy in my hands, I worried about how it would stack up to Letters. I know—I always do this. So finally, I broke down and started to read.

And even though I’m still not getting a lot of sleep with my new littlest one underfoot, I could not put this book down. If I didn’t read it in one sitting, I read it in two. I flew through the pages.

Getting to know more about Rev and his history and getting to see him confront his inner demons sucked me straight into the heart of this tale. I also love that it features not only a hardcore gamer girl, but one who coded her very own online video game! Go, girl! The experiences she describes as a player—the way some other players say ugly things or harass her—is terrible but too true. I can’t help but hope that a story like this will continue to bring light to these situations and start some conversations or change some hearts.

Brigid Kemmerer is quickly becoming one of those authors whose books I want to pre-order as soon as the option becomes available. I loved both Letters to the Lost and More than We Can Tell and I absolutely can’t wait to see what story she tells next.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Rev is part of a multi-racial family. He’s white and his (adoptive) parents are black. Other characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Moderate profanity used fairly infrequently. Rev himself feels negatively about cursing.

Romance/Sexual Content
Emma receives threatening emails which contain sexual innuendo. Kissing between boy and girl. A man attempts to assault a girl.

Spiritual Content
Rev was raised by an abusive father who misused scripture as an excuse to torture him. Nevertheless, he still feels a close bond with the Bible, though we more often see him use it to govern his behavior rather than as a source of comfort. Rev meets a girl outside a church several times, which also carries this unspoken feeling that he feels safe near religious things.

Violent Content
Rev shares brief memories of physical abuse at the hands of his father: a forced tattoo, a burn, broken arm, etc. One scene shows a man slamming a girl’s head against a car window and attempting to assault her.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Review: Genius: The Game by Leopoldo Gout

Book Review and Content, Sci-Fi, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Genius: The Game
Leopoldo Gout
Feiwel & Friends
Available May 3, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

As the clock counts down to Zero Hour, 200 of the best and brightest kids form teams competing to solve a challenge created by a young visionary with world-changing goals. For Rex, Tunde and Painted Wolf, the competition is only part of the challenge. Rex needs a supercomputer housed at the challenge site to locate his brother whose been missing for two years. A war lord threatens to wipe Tunde’s whole village off the map unless Tunde and his friends deliver a powerful weapon to him at the end of the contest. Painted Wolf will do anything to help her friends, but she must keep her identity a secret or her family’s lives are forfeit.

This book reminded me a little bit of On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers. It had a really diverse cast of extremely bright kids with very diverse talents (everything from biology to mechanical engineering to coding.) From the description of the book, I was expecting a much more tense, sort of cerebral thriller kind of tale. While there are some tense moments and the story follows the solving of a puzzle, I didn’t feel like I was really on the edge of my seat so much. I liked Rex a lot and Painted Wolf. Tunde felt a little stiff to me, but his strong sense of morality won me over for sure.

My husband is a software engineer, so I enjoyed showing him some of the code in the story and letting him kind of explain it to me. I liked the way Gout used the code to advance the story, and I was definitely excited to see a software guy in the hero seat. Loved that. (Obviously I’m a bit biased, but still.) I thought it was interesting how the pieces fit together into a much larger puzzle by the end of the story. I’m definitely curious as to where it will go next.

Readers looking for a high-tech adventure story should definitely give this one a read. I think fans of the Percy Jackson books would enjoy the team challenge elements of this story and the strong characters. Over all it’s really clean, and I definitely appreciated that, too.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A war lord makes some threats to Tunde, saying he will basically destroy Tunde’s entire village unless Tunde brings him a custom-made weapon. At one point the war lord puts Tunde’s mom on the phone with him and she pleads with him. It’s intense, but not violent per se.

One team performs surgery on an insect to install an electrical control system.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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