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Rahul Kanakia — 2016

I'm your protagonist-Reshma Kapoor-and if you have the free time to read this book, then you're probably nothing like me. Reshma is a college counselor's dream. She's the top-ranked senior at her ultra-competitive Silicon Valley high school, with a spotless academic record and a long roster of extracurriculars. But there are plenty of perfect students in the country, and if Reshma wants to get into Stanford, and into med school after that, she needs the hook to beat them all. What's a habitual over-achiever to do? Land herself a literary agent, of course. Which is exactly what Reshma does after agent Linda Montrose spots an article she wrote for Huffington Post. Linda wants to represent Reshma, and, with her new agent's help scoring a book deal, Reshma knows she'll finally have the key to Stanford. But she's convinced no one would want to read a novel about a study machine like her. To make herself a more relatable protagonist, she must start doing all the regular American girl stuff she normally ignores. For starters, she has to make a friend, then get a boyfriend. And she's already planned the perfect ending: after struggling for three hundred pages with her own perfectionism, Reshma will learn that meaningful relationships can be more important than success-a character arc librarians and critics alike will enjoy. Of course, even with a mastermind like Reshma in charge, things can't always go as planned. And when the valedictorian spot begins to slip from her grasp, she'll have to decide just how far she'll go for that satisfying ending. (Note: It's pretty far.) In this wholly unique, wickedly funny debut novel, Rahul Kanakia consciously uses the rules of storytelling-and then breaks them to pieces.

Reviews

alexandra@twirlingpages

May 14, 2023

this book was..... unexpected. i don't know how to coherently describe my thoughts on ENTER TITLE HERE. because although yes, i did think it was a well thought out novel, and yes, the idea is good, and yes, it captured my attention and made me want to keep reading, i didn't find it enjoyable. the main reason for this is the protagonist, if you want to call her that. reshma is unlike any other protagonist i've read from; she's an antihero and chances are, you're not going to like her. (i certainly didn't.) but even though her morals were very wrong and that she has nearly every unlikable attribute EVER, i think it was worse because i couldn't relate to her. there are some antagonist that make me WANT the bad guys to win, but reshma? no... she's absolutely awful and i couldn't stand her. i know some characters are "annoying" but this was way beyond that. i could go on a five hour rant about how RESHMA HAS NO SOUL but i'll just leave it at that. the entirety of this novel revolves around reshma's "change" as a character, but i honestly found it flat and unrealistic. because i suppose this is a bit of a memoir, she actually speaks of it like "i was going to do ____, but then i realize it's something the old reshma would've done." like, um, ooooookay i honestly wouldn't have noticed a change if not for her pointing it out. it's not that she was the same person at the beginning and the end, but it was very anticlimactic and subtle. i still think she has the problems she had at the beginning of the story and didn't fully address them. after finishing the novel, i still don't understand the purpose of it. the story doesn't exactly resolve and it felt more like a waste of time than anything else. at the end, i began to ask myself, "why did i read that?" because i just DIDN'T GET IT. all in all, this book is a disappointment. it's definitely interesting and different, but i couldn't relate to the story or its characters.

Samantha Chavez @sam_denisse

Apr 29, 2022

This book is honestly real and came as a scary yet refreshing change to what I usually read. Reshma reminds me of myself in ways I don't like to admit. But this book helped me see that it doesn't have to be that way. It's not the happy book you typically read, but it's happy in it's own quirky way.