Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
* I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. This in no way affected my opinion of the book.
Told through letters to her favourite female filmmakers, Twinkle Mehra navigates her journey as she is approached to help direct a movie for her school’s upcoming festival. Wallflower Twinkle grabs at the chance of getting to show off her skills while using it as an opportunity to get closer to her long-time crush, Neil Roy. But she finds herself falling for her producer, Neil’s twin brother Sahil. Suddenly, a mystery person called “N” begins emailing her, Twinkle is dead set on it being Neil. Soon, everything spirals out of control but can Twinkle change the script in time?
Twinkle was such an adorable read. The characters are a bit younger than Menon’s debut characters, but you get the same feeling from this cast. Twinkle and Dimple share similar but different struggles when pursuing their passions so if you’re a fan of Menon’s first, you’ll definitely love this. There’s a lot to like in this book. The formatting was cute and worked well. The storyline with her family was one of the better parts of the book.
I enjoyed the dynamics of Twinkle and her friends. It’s more frenemy, but I liked how up and down the relationship went. It was a more realistic portrayal of teen groups in high schools. But I did feel like there was a lack of clarity as to why Maddie left Twinkle.
With everything that was good and enjoyable about this book, there was a lot that I didn’t enjoy. Everyone sort of becomes unbearable. Like all of them. Twinkle becomes really selfish and just belittles everyone around her and never really apologises for most of her behaviour even though she internally tells herself it wasn’t right to do that. And her stringing Sahil long when she begins to kind of date him even though she really just wants to date his popular twin brother, who literally doesn’t even know her. She uses him to try and shoe her way into the popular group, and her attitude towards everyone just didn’t make sense. She learns her lesson in the end, but that didn’t make it any better to read.
Overall, I’m glad I gave this book a chance since I wasn’t a huge of fan of When Dimple Met Rishi. I think I preferred Twinkle’s story over Dimple’s due to personal taste and how the plot developed and was wrapped up in the end. It was a fun, light read and great for the summer!
as told by zaheerah 