A Match Made in Mehendi Book Review

Book title: A Match Made in Mehendi

Author: Nandini Bajpai

Simi Sangha has a plan: with her freshman year of high school finally over, she’s ready to step out of the shadows, dig deep into her art, and (perhaps the most crucial goal) stand up to resident mean girl Amanda. But her plans go awry when she accidentally pairs up her cousin with a future lawyer, convincing her family that she has the Sangha match-making gene that her mom, aunt, and grandmother all wield to create happy couples in their family business.

Initially, Simi is reluctant to abandon her formula for the perfect year, but with a little convincing from her best friend Noah, she teams up with her techie brother to create a dating app based on her family’s match-making principles. But when the app’s popularity unexpectedly skyrockets, Simi finds herself in the aftermath of a high school where everyone’s love story (including hers) is resting in her hands.

Verdict: Bajpai writes with a colloquial and relaxed tone that makes this book a quick, fun, and light-hearted novel. While the novel’s language was geared towards telling rather than showing, Bajpai’s rich story and expressive characters more than made up for this. The main character, Simi, was especially dynamic. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to see how she progressed in her journey regarding match-making. At first, she was apprehensive about getting sucked into the family business and having to neglect her artwork; however, by the end of the book, she realized that she could be more than one thing. I also loved that Simi’s art focused on mehendi — by incorporating mehendi into her daily routine and using it as a base for her art project, Simi harnessed her culture and hybridized it with her more Western life.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book was the mouth-watering depictions of different Indian snacks, from bready, spicy samosas to cruncy, onion-filled pakoras. And while the meal descriptions were authentic, even more genuine were the relationships Bajpai portrayed. The casual affectionate terms like beta and puttar as well as how close Simi and her brother were to their grandparents would make any reader smile. As for the plot, it was easy to follow and incredibly detailed. Any reader could see Bajpai had put thought into subtleties like the app’s features and the story’s timeline.

I recently read in an interview that Bajpai has a hard time writing “mean girl” characters, since she’s an avid enthusiast of girls supporting girls. But in this novel, Bajpai did a great job of creating a troubled and complex villain.

Overall, this book was cute, short, and ingeniously fulfilled its purpose as a teen romance novel.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed by: Siri Palreddy '20