From Twinkle, With Love
By Sandhya Menon
Genre: YA Contemporary
Recommended for: Ages 14+, young girls who have a passion for film, anyone who likes journal-style writing, those who love sweet romances that aren’t insta-love.
Aspiring filmmaker and wallflower Twinkle Mehra has stories she wants to tell and universes she wants to explore, if only the world would listen. So when fellow film geek Sahil Roy approaches her to direct a movie for the upcoming Summer Festival, Twinkle is all over it.
The chance to publicly showcase her voice as a director? Dream come true. The fact that it gets her closer to her longtime crush, Neil Roy-a.k.a. Sahil’s twin brother? Dream come true x 2.
When mystery man N begins emailing her, Twinkle is sure it’s Neil, finally ready to begin their happily-ever-after. The only slightly inconvenient problem is that, in the course of movie-making, she’s fallen madly in love with the irresistibly adorkable Sahil.
Twinkle soon realizes that resistance is futile: The romance she’s got is not the one she’s scripted. But will it be enough?
The Gist:
From Twinkle, With Love is a cute teen sweet romance coming-of-age novel that is perfect for lifting your spirits. It’s a quick and easy read full of rich character development and relatable scenarios for any teenager. And even amongst its lightness, there are moments of depth to give the story an extra layer. All this being said, while I think it’s a great quick read, I found myself detached from the plot and disengaged in the protagonist’s motivations, which are the main reasons for my rating. While the characters are strong, the lack of certain elements related to plot made the story less compelling than most YA contemporaries I read.
What I Liked:
I have two favorite things about this book: the characters and the voice.
Menon managed to walk the fine line of creating a main character with very relatable problems, emotions and reactions while also adding internal struggles that made Twinkle very three dimensional. I often find main characters in teenage books a little whiny and dramatic, but that’s who teenagers are! That’s who I was in high school! Twinkle’s thoughts and reactions to her environment and relationships where strinkingly similar to how I could seen teen Luna thinking and reacting. She had moments of great compassion and moments of great selfishness. As we all do.
On top of that, the character development for Twinkle was astounding. From beginning to end, there is a gentle arc the reader follows to show Twinkle growing into who she wants to be. Menon uses Twinkle’s passion for film and the situations she finds herself in to allow Twinkle to discover not only who she really is, but who she wants to be. I loved watching Twinkle become more confident and assertive throughout the story. And the setbacks along the way only added to her growth, which I appreciated.
Now for the voice. Again, I have to watch myself because I am not a teenager, therefore sometimes find the teenage voice a tad grating. But that’s a personal preference. If I’m looking at mastery of capturing the voice of a book’s target audience, From Twinkle, With Love does it with expert precision. If you’re a teenager, or know a teenager you want to give a book to, I think they will find this voice to be fairly true to life.
Last, if you are looking for a teen romance book that actually displays what I consider a healthy teen relationship, I think this is an excellent book. The characters don’t fall in love over night. They don’t become obsessed with each other where their entire happiness depends on the other person. It is a sweet romance that develops over time, which I hope all teenagers see as the way to approach relationships.
What I Didn’t Like:
I liked the desires Twinkle had in the book. Even if I didn’t think they were best for Twinkle, I thought they were realistic desires and goals. Where I thought the story fell lacking was the motivation. Several key components were missing in the plot to make her motivations for certain things compelling. This resulted in a plot that fell flat for me. The characters are great, but if it feels like there’s no reason for them to be doing anything, it’s still a less-than exciting story. There were also so pretty gaping holes in terms of follow-through for why Twinkle was particularly passionate about things and displaying her passions.
Along with lack of motivations, the main plot line got muddles and overshadowed by one or two subplots that weren’t developed enough to make them worthwhile to me.
There were also some inconsistencies I noted with some of the side characters’ relationship to Twinkle, where Twinkle felt a certain way about them, but based on what I was reading, the opposite seemed true. This bleeds into the lack of motivation comment, where I found myself wonder why Twinkle felt a certain way, which made the emotion less compelling.
LunasLuckyRating: 3/5 Lunas
