Kismat Connection is a charming contemporary romance YA story. I loved everything about the culture shared in the story, and I'm glad that was a consistent thread throughout.

Arjun is the MMC, and he starts out with a long-time crush on the FMC, Madhuri, who thinks of Arjun like a brother. She pursues the fake dating for **reasons** (no spoilers), which gives Arjun a reason to show her how great they would be as a couple. Then antics ensue, of course!

As I'd expected, it's a sweet romance, which I appreciated. However, there are a few f-bombs in the story, which I hadn't expected. Generally, sweet romance stories don't have cursing. While there wasn't heavy cursing, it was noticeable to me. There were other heavy topics surrounding the main story, but they were not heavy-handed, making this a welcome, light-hearted read.

Arjun's abandonment issues and his attempt to never be a burden to anyone made him a sympathetic character. Reading about Arjun wanting someone to love him unconditionally (a parent figure, a best friend, anyone) was heart-wrenching. I was definitely rooting for him.

While Madhuri had her own set of problems to overcome, she came across as selfish and small-minded. Obviously, we want to give a FMC room to grow and change, but even when she had her character arc/change, I wanted her to get to know herself, mature more, and then enter into a relationship.

I found myself thinking a lot about this story, which shows it has emotional resonance. The characters were flawed (realistic!), and I wanted them to get more comfortable *on their own* before committing to each other. The relationships between the cast of characters were well done, specifically the familial relationships and friendships outside of the main couple. Overall it's a great story with lots of heart.

I really enjoyed Madhuri & Arjun’s love story. I love how they literally grew up together
& discovered their feelings for one another. I wish the fake dating trope was present more, and also have them go through some awkward moments while pretending to date.
Overall it’s a cute and fun read that I think many will enjoy for the innocent love story and deep life lessons.

Did not finish. Characters grated on me, honestly. I did NOT buy that he would have been in love with her forever given how self-involved she is!

Madhuri Iyer feels trapped by her fate. Her mother has predicted that during her upcoming senior year in high school her academics will suffer and she'll mess up her close relationships. Plus, she is terrified that the family "curse" of living happily ever after with her first boyfriend will trap her in a life she doesn't want. So she convinces her best friend since forever, Arjun Mehta, to participate in an experiment with her--to date with the expectation of breaking up to prove her mother wrong and break the "curse." What she doesn't count on is that her best friend may have deeper feelings for her, and that she's about to hurt him very badly.

Both Madhuri and Arjun are Americans of Indian descent in Southern California and live very much within that sub-culture. He embraces it more than she does, but both are trying to reconcile both sides of themselves and the reader gets to enjoy lots of glimpses of what that cultural intersection looks like. Both of them are experiencing the adolescent tension of figuring out who they are in a world that doesn't always make sense to them and is often cruel. Madhuri likes to believe that she's logical and in control, but in reality she's emotionally dysregulated and focused only on herself. That works well with Arjun because he is starved for love and is afraid he'll lose the little he has if he owns his feelings and sets healthy boundaries. Both of them are, at heart, insecure and don't know what to do about it--relatable to teenagers, if I remember that phase with any accuracy. I was impressed at the gradual maturation of both characters (rather than overnight, as is common in books and film), and loved them all the more for learning how to be healthier for themselves and for their loved ones.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my electronic advance copy.

I am speechless. I just finished reading this book and I loved it so much, and I need everyone to pick it up the second it comes out.

The Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan is a YA contemporary romance that follows Arjun and Madhuri who have their fates read by Madhuri's mother at the beginning of the book, and decide to create the Kismat Experiment to prove her, and the universe, wrong because Madhuri wants to believe she has full control over her life. This means the two best friends are going to fake date so that they can break up and change their fates.

So it's a best friends to lovers romance with fake dating, and it is one of the sweetest, most romantic and emotional YA romances I've ever read. It also has Indian American representation, disability rep within Madhuri's family (Crohn's disease), and deals with abandonment of a parent. Arjun and Madhuri immediately became one of my all-time favorite characters, and their romance was so beautiful and sweet that I'm sure every reader will root for them so hard. It is also grumpy/sunshine, with Arjun being the sunshine one and the sweetest cinnamon roll MMC to exist. Madhuri is grumpy and strong-willed but she has a big heart, and she is wonderful too.

If this wasn't amazing enough, it has some incredible side characters as well, who don't take away from the main romance but add so much to the story. There's wonderful friendships, a sister relationship, and generally amazing family relationships. It deals with so many different important things.

I could talk about this book for hours but - long story short, you all need to add it to your TBR. If you have been looking for a book that's a fast-paced, fun, sweet, meaningful, and lovely story, look no further.

When something is destined to happen, no matter what you do it’s going to happen one way or another. Call it Kismet, call it destiny call it divine intervention, it’s going to happen.

We meet Madhuri who is dead set on proving her family wrong and showing them that the stars are wrong, and she oversees her own destiny. She enlists the help of her best friend Arjun on a dating experiment to show they really aren’t meant to be. It was interesting to see these two interact with one another, it was so obvious the feelings that they shared. But what I really enjoyed from this book was the sense of family. The bond they had with one another was unbreakable.

Arjun has been going through a lot with the divorce of his parents, his absentee mother but he finds solace in Madhuri’s family and it’s a blessing. The heartfelt conversations he would have with her mother, the love they share for one another it was beautiful. You don’t have to be family by blood to be family.

I felt an intense sense of bonding throughout this book, and you really can’t break what’s going to happen, cause it’s going to happen. I loved seeing Madhuri grow and get more confidence in herself and her culture. Culture is important, it’s what makes you who you are and pushing it to the back just stifles you. This was a great read.

Ananya's writing is so easy to fall in love with. The fake dating trope blended beautifully with Madhuri's initial defiance of her mother's astrology readings, and watching her warm up to an already-in-love Arjun was so sweet. This was a quick read with striking language that will leave you wanting more.

2.5

the cover ??? gorgeous.
the writing ??? not bad.
the romance ??? not for me.

and as much as i want to, i REALLY don't like madhuri

Kismat Connection is a beautiful sworn-worthy story. Madhuri and Arjun’s story hits close to home. I loved the family dynamics, reading about the culture, and the romance.

This was such a fun cute romance. I had a great time reading. Highly recommend! Had such a fun set of characters!

3.5 stars rounded down

kinda conflicted about this one because i wanted to love it so much more than i did.

however i love stories where the boy is down bad for the girl so that was a win for me.

what i wasn’t a huge fan of was that when madhuri and arjun got into their fake relationship, it’s like a switch went off from madhuri adamantly denying that she’d ever like him to practically being in love with him. not even a realization that she was always in love with him, just one second she didn’t like him romantically, and the next second she does and is all for making the relationship real.

i also really enjoyed exploring both their cultures and getting insight into madhuri’s and arjun’s relationships with their culture and the double standards in how society views them.

overall, i enjoyed this story and i will read it again someday :)

thank you to netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

this was a really good! I liked the characters, and they were super well-developed. the plot was super cool and fun to read, and the writing was also smooth and easy to understand
highly recommend

KISMAT CONNECTION delivers on its premise of an desi YA romance focused on destiny. Madhuri star chart has always been her enemy - she wants to chart her own path, not be forced into obeying her destiny. Arjun's star chart has served as a constant in his life, a guiding and reassuring force. As Madhuri fights her destiny, Arjun wants her to embrace it and fall in love with him. Overall, a cute and predictable romance. 4-stars because the B-plots were repetitive and the story seemed to lack stakes. Recommended for high school and public libraries.

Review that I will be posting on Goodreads today and will post on Instagram within the next two weeks!

This book was filled with some of my favorite tropes: multi-POV, reverse grumpy x sunshine, fake dating, and found family. Madhuri and Arjun were sweet together, and I was cheering for them the whole time. 🥹 And I love how Madhuri’s family took Arjun in and how all of the interactions were heartwarming and inviting.

My only holdback for this book was that I felt like Madhuri’s stubbornness about their relationship was a smidge much to me. The first few interactions of uncertainty felt honest and reasonable with everything going on. However, the continued back and forth gave me emotional whiplash and made me feel unsettled for most of the book.

But! Overall, I really enjoyed this book! I thought it was sweet and did a wonderful job of giving depth to the characters and giving heartfelt motivations.

* Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. *

*Note: This ARC review will be posted on my tumblr blog on May 13th, a month before the book is published.

Summary:
Madhuri Iyer doesn't believe in astrology. So when her mom reads her horoscope for the year and it predicts failure, she decides she will create a fake relationship on her own terms to disprove not only her prophecy, but also the Iyer family curse, where Iyer women always end up with the first man they get with. The guy she selects to fake-date her? Arjun Mehta, her best friend. Except, well, Arjun's been in love with her for years but she doesn't know that.

Some background:
Listen, I'm a pretty simple South Indian gal: if I see an author by the name of Ananya Devarajan, a heroine named Madhuri Iyer, and a cover with two dark-skinned Indian characters, I'm going to read that book pretty much regardless of the content. And when I found out this was Ananya's debut novel, and our cultural backgrounds were pretty similar, I knew I had to give this book a shot.

My review:
Before we get into the meat of the review, two language-related things I want to note:

1. I have never heard Indian people refer to their elders by their last name. The book references Indian aunties by calling them "Auntie Iyer" or "Auntie Mehta", but that's not very accurate to the diaspora. We always use their first name, and then "auntie" or "uncle". So instead of "Auntie Iyer", the more accurate way to reference her would be "Kamala Auntie".

2. The Iyers are a Tamil family so I have no idea why Madhuri's mom is calling anyone "beta", which is a Hindi term of endearment, when the Tamil "kanna" exists.

Moving onto the review, this book has three plots: There is Madhuri and Arjun's "fake"-dating saga, Madhuri's struggle to accept her Indian side and the culture, and Arjun and his mother's estrangement. All of them were good individually, but it was a little difficult for me to follow along when the plots intertwined.

First, the fake dating plot. Madhuri creates a dating "contract" of sorts (or I guess, an experimental design) called the Kismat Experiment with the intent of breaking up with Arjun at the end of the school year on her own terms. Some things worked for me throughout the span of their relationship: It had its ups and downs, there was parental involvement which was pretty funny, and I did appreciate Arjun asking for time when Madhuri confesses her love for him at last, which he had every right to do. What worked less for me was the somewhat lack of chemistry between Madhuri and Arjun. It's tough because when it comes to friends-to-lovers as a trope, you have to navigate that slippery slope between not seeing your friend a viable love interest, and then suddenly seeing him as a love interest. Writing that transition in a believable way is hard to get right. The author sort of leaned in on the familiar past when it came why Madhuri and Arjun liked each other (for example, Arjun affectionately remembers Madhuri as the girl who stole his heart when she stole a jalebi from him when they were six) but I couldn't really find much to read about what exactly changed for Madhuri when it came to how she viewed Arjun.

A more minor note, but I think there could have been a *little* more physicality to Madhuri and Arjun's relationship, while still being within the bounds of how far YA typically goes. I liked him helping her put on her jhumka, so maybe more moments like that? That would have been great.

Apart from the relationship plot, a significant portion of the book was devoted to Madhuri's struggles with internalized racism. It's a product of the external racism that she faces in school and in her town, and I have to say, it was difficult to read such blatant hate spewing out of teenagers of our generation's mouths in 2023. But maybe that's just me speaking from a place of privilege, because as Madhuri herself points out, it would definitely have been easier for her if she was raised in a place like "Edison, New Jersey or Fremont, California" instead of her small California town. A lot of this plot is shown through Madhuri's struggles with having to quit Bharatanatyam after getting bullied for it, and how she starts to enjoy it again, and eventually performs.

Something I'm glad the author points out is that our culture has become more "trendy" in recent years (especially when it comes to wellness) and it would be accurate to say certain parts of the culture are fetishized (she suggests Arjun is a victim of this) and appropriated, even as the diaspora continue to face racism.

The final portion of the plot was regarding Arjun's family situation. His mother is a divorcée, and Ananya definitely spoke to the cultural taboo that divorce continues to be within the Indian community. I'm not gonna lie, this aspect of the book was very difficult for me to read, especially because of how easily his mother basically neglected him and left him alone for long periods of time (like, months on end). I'm glad Arjun put boundaries for himself by the end of the book.

Overall:
I think this is a solid book, and very much on the sweet end of YA. My biggest critique is that I really wanted to read more of Arjun and Madhuri's relationship, so sometimes it felt like other side-plots got in the way of that (like, for example, the hospitalization plot).

That being said, this is another step forward for South Asian rep in literature, specifically South Indian rep, so I'm very glad I got to read this book.

Thank you to Inkyard Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

Arc Book Review
YA Contemporary Romance
Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan
Available June 13th, 2023
4 ⭐✨🌟💫
Ooops I did it again. I applied for an ARC without reading the blurb because I thought the cover was cute.
I went into this one blind, not realizing it was a YA Contemporary Romance. But that's okay. This one tugged at my heartstrings and was a love story that encompassed all facets of love. Romantic, Maternal, Friendship, and Self Love.
Arjun jumps at the chance to fake date his best friend in her misguided attempt to fight the Universe. Of course, he sees this as an opportunity to show her that he's perfect for her and they should be together for real.
Madhuri feels like her free will is being compromised and wants to prove that she can change her destiny by taking control. She knows that Arjun is a safe bet for her relationship experiment because she will never love him as more than a friend.
I know, you're probably thinking friends to lovers, fake dating, this is not original. TRUST me this one is different. The focus of this story wasn't so much on their fake relationship but the insecurities and struggles each had.
Arjun has a strained relationship with his mom resulting in abandonment issues, he continues to compromise his feelings out of fear of losing what little family he has. Our girl has an entire identity crisis in regard to her culture and assimilating.
This is a great read. There's no spice (middle schoolers can read this) but lots of feelings. It's beautifully written, entertaining, and reflective.
Highly Recommend

First of all, an A+ story. Also a great premise -- so fun and fresh. And of course who doesn't love a friends-to-lovers story, especially when it's YA?

I was also glad to see a YA written with a slightly younger voice -- so much is upper YA -- although younger YA isn't my favorite to read.

It did feel a bit like we could have used more of the leads' connection growing. Overall, though, a great read!

This was simply beautiful and I adored it. I fell for this book from the first chapter to the last page.
I just reviewed Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan. #KismatConnection #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

Precious precious precious. I am CONSTANTLY looking for he-falls-first stories and this one certainly delivered. I loved seeing into both characters’ thoughts and watching as she slowly gets with the picture that this could be something real with her best friend and not just some game. It’s also lovely to talk about how you can’t just play with your feelings. Something there isn’t an explanation or a rhyme or reason for the way we feel. You can’t manipulate it so easily. Friends to lovers keeps gaining traction for me every time I read stories like these!

This book wasn't for me, and that's okay! Maybe other people will like it better than I did, for although I'll always be a YA-enjoyer, I'm not exactly in the target demographic anymore (sigh). For me, the pacing was off and the writing felt strained, which made reading the book quite a struggle, and I didn't even grow fond of any of the characters to make up for it. Nonetheless I wish Ananya all the best on her debut and any future endeavors!

Thanks to Inkyard Press and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.