Review: Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan

From the publisher:
In this charming YA debut, a girl who’s determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into an experimental relationship—not knowing that he has been in love with her for years.

Is it possible to change your fate?

Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family curse.

Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she’ll never fall for: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun’s feelings for her are a variable she didn’t account for.

As Madhuri starts to fall for her experimental boyfriend, she’ll have to decide if charting her own destiny is worth breaking Arjun’s heart—and her own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ananya Devarajan for the ARC.

I am honestly torn on how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I love the fake dating trope, but this honestly didn’t feel like fake dating… or real dating or dating at all. It was basically two people who’ve known each other forever acting the same way but claiming they’re in a romantic relationship now.

Arjun and Madhuri have been best friends since they were 11 and both have some major trauma and issues surrounding their ethnicity—both are American born children of Indian immigrants. Madhuri's mother does an astrological reading for them both that reveals that Arjun is going to have a stellar senior year and finally get the love of someone who has been withholding it while Madhuri, a perfectionist in everything, is going to fail in school and in love. There's also a bit about Madhuri's "family curse" in which they all marry their first romantic partner and live happily ever after. Madhuri rebels against this, but in doing so, is just so unbelievably selfish. She creates the Kismat Experiment in order to have a fake relationship with Arjun and "break" the family curse. She does this with the intention of dumping Arjun before they leave for college without caring about anyone else’s feelings. Not Arjun who has been in love with her for the better part of a decade; her family who already love him like a son/brother; her friends who are also his friends; and herself--because what is going to happen when she loses her best friend?

Overall the story was cute, but it both felt like it moved too fast and too slow. I wish that Madhuri had a bit more character growth and the relationship changed a bit and we got to see them actually date.

My rating: 3/5 stars. There are maybe two kisses in this book, so definitely YA appropriate.

Kismat Connection by Ananya Devarajan will be released June 13, 2023.