96 Words For Love - Rachel Roy & Ava Dash
Book Synopsis: A modern retelling of a classic Indian legend, 96 Words for Love is a coming-of-age story. Ever since her acceptance to UCLA, 17-year-old Raya Liston has been quietly freaking out. She feels simultaneously lost and trapped by a future already mapped out for her. Then her beloved grandmother dies, and Raya jumps at the chance to spend her last free summer at the ashram in India where her grandmother met and fell in love with her grandfather. Raya hopes to find her center and her true path. But she didn't expect to fall in love... with a country of beautiful contradictions, her fiercely loyal cousin, a local girl with a passion for reading, and a boy who teaches her that in Sanskrit, there are 96 different ways to say the word "love." A modern retelling of the classic Indian legend of Shakuntala and Dushyanta.
This book was super cute. It actually reminded me of the British show on Netflix, Cuckoo because of the Indian Ashram.
Although this book is nothing like Dale's experience, I highly enjoyed it.
Honestly, I didn't expect much from Rachel Roy and her daughter, but it goes to show, you can't judge a book by its cover - and what a gorgeous cover it is!
I guess the cover was inspired by the Indian Holi Festival. Ava Dash is actually on the cover, I guess the character Raya was inspired by her in reality.
Next month I will actually be attending a Holi Festival run.
What I loved about this book...
The plot, the relationships between the main character and others.
Kiran is easily my favorite person in this book, Anandi is my second and Raya comes dead last. Twists and turns - a few that I wasn't expecting made this book the first read of the month for me.
April Fool's! But not really, I 100% loved reading this and can't wait to read more.
Things I hated while I was reading this...
Cliches and the lack of maturity of the main character Raya.
Personally, I thought that Raya fell in love too easily and had too weak of a mind to follow through with anything, but she did have character development so I guess that's an improvement.
Spoiler Alert! Skip ahead if you don't want to read this part. Sex trafficking was mentioned in this book, but nothing too graphic or terrible other than the loss of the main character's Daadee. Since this a young adult book, I wasn't expecting that much graphic details but fair warning: there are some parts that aren't recommended for younger teenagers to be reading.
96 Words For Love had me on the edge of my seat and I hadn't been that invested in the story when I picked it up.
All in all, I did really like this book. However, you should read it for yourself and find out if this is a novel you'd be interested in. Super beautiful pages and you probably won't regret reading it.
James Patterson Presents actually wrote a foreword for this book and it made me want to read other things from this same publishing company.
On the front of the book, Kim Kardashian West has a review snippet which means she liked this book too.
Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 Stars!