Radha & Jai's Recipe for Romance

May 24, 2021
Sharma (My So-Called Bollywood Life) deftly crafts a sweet romance steeped in food, dance, and desi culture. When 17-year-old Radha Chopra arrives in London for the International Kathak Classics semifinals, she has no idea her life is about to be upended. Having spent years training in the North Indian classical dance form, Radha is blindsided when she learns that her previous success may have had something to do with her mother’s affair with a judge. After Radha and her mother move from Chicago to New Jersey, the talented teen enrolls at the Princeton Academy of the Arts and Sciences, striking a deal with her mom: if Radha devotes herself to dancing for one year, her mother will pay her university tuition. At the Academy, Bollywood Beats dance team captain Jai dreams of attending medical school, a financial impossibility unless he wins scholarship money at a regional dance competition. When his attractive new friend Radha agrees to help choreograph his team’s competition routine, the teens will have to overcome their personal demons—including performance anxiety and difficult family relationships—to win. Financial and medical issues intersect with familial pressures in ways that relatably shape the well-wrought characters’ lives, while humor and romance leaven the quickly paced book’s exploration of serious topics. Ages 14–up. Agent: Antonella Iannarino, David Black Agency.

June 1, 2021
Seventeen-year-old Radha Chopra has always loved kathak, a classical dance form from North India. Because of her dedication and hard work, Indian American Radha is world famous--and burned out. She no longer knows if she's dancing for joy or for her mother, Sujata Roy Chopra, who pressures Radha to excel so that she doesn't experience the same regret she feels for leaving her own acclaimed dance career behind two decades before. When Radha refuses to compete in the finals at an international championship in London, her mother is furious. Although Radha is sure that her kathak career is over, she makes a deal with her mother: She will leave Chicago to spend her senior year at an arts academy in Princeton, New Jersey. If Radha works hard and gives dancing one more shot, Sujata promises that she can make her own decisions at the end of the year. Radha is sure that she will give up dance until she meets Jai Patel, a working-class Punjabi Gujarati American boy who is the captain of the school's Bollywood dance team. Radha quickly falls for Jai--but is their romance enough to make her also fall for dancing all over again? This entertaining novel alternates between Jai's and Radha's third-person perspectives. Changes in their relationship, and between each of them and their immigrant families, are well paced, authentic, and page-turning. Both characters are well developed and easy to root for. A perceptive and textured romance. (Romance. 14-18)

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July 1, 2021
Grades 9-12 Radha, an outstanding kathak dancer, stops performing during an international competition, after learning that her mother has slept with one of the judges. Moving to New Jersey for her senior year of high school, she meets Jai, who seems determined to sacrifice his dreams of attending Columbia and becoming a doctor, in order continue working in his family's store. Jai convinces Radha, who misses the "dance joy" she felt while performing, to choreograph an important piece for the school's Bollywood-style dance team. Senior year brings increasing stress, as the two Indian Americans struggle with their families' expectations, the pressures they're putting on themselves, and the romance that draws them together. The author of My So-called Bollywood Life (2018), Sharma creates two intelligent main characters who teeter on the edge of questionable, idealistic decisions before listening to those who offer more realistic perspectives. Readers will enjoy Radha's lifelong love of dance, her newfound pleasure in Indian cooking, and Jai's enthusiasm for Bollywood as much as their strong, mutual attraction in this upbeat romance.

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