High school is a rough time for everyone, but Payal Mehta has it a bit rougher than most. Not only is she Indian American in the middle of Florida, the boy she's had a crush on for three years has managed to throw up on her. Twice. In three days. And as terrible as it is to say, Payal's horrible few days were enough for me to buy into this novel. Payal's voice as a first-person narrator was so strong, and the message of this book was so important it has become an easy book for me to recommend to everyone.
This story primarily revolves around Payal, her crush Jon Slate, and her academic rival Philip Kim. After the double puke incident, Jon decides to take Payal out to lunch - which she believes to be a date. Instead, he pulls out the "If I were Indian I would date you" card and tries to set her up with one of the few Indian Americans he knows. This microaggression, or "baby racism" as she comes to call it, sends Payal into a spiral - determined she can solve Jon's racism with true love. She recruits Philip Kim to help her, afraid her friends won't be on board, and the two devise a plan to get Jon to fall in love with Payal. And as I am sure you can imagine, chaos ensues. The plot is hysterical and left me laughing out loud throughout the book.
I also loved getting to know about Payal and her family's culture. So many times in fiction, people will sanitize their culture to make it more palatable for white readers. This book though? It thankfully doesn't. I loved getting to know who Payal was and what made her who she is. It let me learn a lot about Desi culture and what it looks like to be the child of immigrants - two things I will never fully understand. It's why I love "own voices" stories, it lets me learn about others and gives me a better worldview of experiences that are so different than my own. And through this, it let me look more into microaggressions in a way I hadn't before, and while I had never done anything as terrible as Jon (because unfortunately, the lunch incident is the LEAST offensive one he does), it did help reveal a few blind spots I didn't realize I had. I am glad this book was able to help me grow, and I hope to recommend it to some of the teenagers I teach in hopes they will also be able to grow from it.
If there was one thing, I would change about this book, it would be to make it about fifty pages longer. Where Payal was fully fleshed out, the rest of the characters all seemed to fall a little flat - and I feel like if there had been a little bit more descriptions of everyone, it would have made this story perfect. There were a few questions I had wanted answered like "Why does Philip always wear the same bomber jacket?" or "What has Neil been up to when he was icing out Payal?" I think if the author had sprinkled in a few more of these details, it would have brought the story to life and given the readers more to hang on to.
But all that being said, I do think the most brilliant thing Preeti Chhibber did was include texts, emails, and footnotes. Comedy footnotes are one of my favorite underutilized literary devices because they act as if they are secret inside jokes between the author, or in this case main character, and the reader. I have always found this to be an amazing and engaging way to draw in the reader quickly, but only when done correctly. And these footnotes accomplished it beautifully. In addition, the texts between the different characters allowed us to see how their relationships worked, and when someone left Payal on "read" you had to gasp at the shock of it. It was a fun way to play with a bunch of literary devices that aren't commonly used, and I hope it is something the author continues to do in future books.
I was so impressed this was Preeti Chhibber's debut novel, and I can just feel her having an amazing career if this is where she started. And to be honest, it was really nice having a YA book that felt like it was about regular everyday teenagers. I'm not the biggest fan of the trend of maturing up YA because adults read it - it's not fair for the audience these books are supposed to be for. But this one? Adults who read it will probably hate being taken back to their awkward high school selves, but I feel like teenagers are the ones who will truly be obsessed with this book. They need books to teach them about life and what is and isn't okay - and they need to be able to relate to the characters they see in fiction. Therefore, I think this is the perfect book to put the Y back in YA, and I hope others follow in the author's footsteps.
Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot is available for preorder through Penguin Random House and will be released on September 24th.