Naomi Kanakia

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their glamorous, hedonistic lifestyle in tech-bubble San Francisco.

Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse show more basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there’s a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company’s generous healthcare benefits.

Jhanvi enters a world of beautiful, decadent fire eaters and their lavish sex parties. But as her pretensions to cynicism and control start to fade, she develops a Gatsbyesque attraction to these happy young people and their bold claims of unconditional love. But do any of her privileged new friends really like or accept her? Her financial needs expose the limits of a community built on limitless self-expression, and soon she has to choose between doing what’s right, and doing what’s right for her.

This darkly funny novel skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture, and asks whether "found family" is just another of the 21st-century's broken promises.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Goals and aspirations are like morals and principles: without them you're adrift, with them you're at risk, under their spell you're doomed. Stop introspecting and examining yourself, your mental construct, your inner dialogue, and see how fast the fall from the moral high ground comes.

Surfaces aren't very pretty after you've experienced what Jhanvi has. All that energy to become a surface version of a fantasy she's had locked in her head until it's eaten every other thought in there. Like Saltburn, like The Talented Mr. Ripley, this is open to a facile reading of "how awful these rich scum are" followed by "what a prick this grifter is."

Don't stop there.

How horrible a world do we live in when this kind of grift is the only way to get what that very world has conditioned you to think you want?

The dimwitted techies are awful; Jhanvi is horrible; but who here hasn't bought into the surface glamour of the world as it points its skeletal finger directly at your core of lack and absence, to say "fill that this way to be truly full at last?" It's seductive because it sounds easy and we want it to be true. It's neither. This is the beating heart of Author Kanakia's story.

The sheer chutzpah of writing across race and class and hotness boundaries about the things that both cross and reinforce those boundaries in such a direct narrative voice! That it comes out of a deeply unreliable narrator's mind. That it's entitled "The Default World." That Jhanvi's completely sure she's Right. That she never tips her hand...you can read Author Kanakia's story on any level you meet it at, come away sure that's The Right Way to see it, and no one can tell you otherwise. That is craft at an unusually high level.

Beware of Being Right. It is addictive and destructive and utterly blindingly grotesquely wrong.

I'm aware that a lot of people found this a challenging story to accept. I think that's excellent. I assure you Jhanvi is only fictionalized, not fictional. She's alive and well and grifting her heart out in reality more certainly now than ever when trans folk are under attack in 2025-Felonious-Yam Murruhkuh. I say, good on ya babay and more power to you in the quest to become yourself.

The big problem for the Jhanvis of the world, the Henrys and Katies of the world is discovering you *are* yourself already, and you don't like that person.

So why didn't I finish the book off with the rest of that fifth star? Because setting the story in the Aughties felt like Author Kanakia wanted to be safe, putting it at a distance. That was uncharacteristically cheap. But there's nothing to say others will feel that way. show less

Well. This was not the book I was expecting (a fairly fluff YA), but it was a good read nonetheless. The main character is not a YA trope, but a big antihero.

"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 super competitive - she needs to beat everyone to get the best grades to get into Stanford. She needs a hook for her application, so she gets a literary agent. Too bad she still needs to write a novel, show more and no one would want to read about her without becoming more relatable. So Reshma tries to become more relatable, but Reshma has to go pretty far to keep her top spot in class. How many times does she need to sue her teachers and school to keep her spot? show less

This is an interesting book! I’m not sure that “I liked it”, is the right description because there were times when the main character made me really angry! But! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that means this is a bad book at all! I love when books get me riled up! The main character, Nandan is a really interesting dude. His character reads as super authentic to me! I remember being that age and not knowing what I thought about things from one moment to the next… which is also show more why he made me angry.

This book is about figuring out who you are, sure, but Nandan has a frustrating way of moving through life. He’s struggling with some of his feelings, resistant to labeling himself and then gets swept up in it before he’s really been able to figure out what the hell is going on! I really felt for the guy, while at the same time finding myself frustrated because he seemed to be drawing other people into his confusion. Now, that’s what life is about. Life isn’t all cut and dried. Life can be damned messy sometimes, and we don’t always make the right decisions. When we are young, it can be really easy to get caught up in things and race ahead of ourselves.

I loved this book even if there were parts of what the character went through that I didn’t “like”. I would recommend this to anyone who reads YA… especially young humans who may be questioning their own wants, needs, desires… or anything else for that matter. There are no wrong choices. There are just choices.

OH! and what a great cover! show less

Messy, problematic and a brutally honest depiction of teen sexuality.

'But people don't want honesty. They don't want mess. They don't want confusion. They don't want awkwardness or second thoughts or . . . or . . . or any of it. They want a simple story.' - Nandan

Despite its gorgeous cover art and sweet title, this is not really a queer YA romance novel. The romantic leads are not fated to be together (they're not even particularly healthy together) and there is no adorable show more 'will-they-won't-they' as they try to find out if the other one is interested in them too. (This is not to knock those books — I have read and enjoyed those books — this is just not one of those books.)

The main character, Nandan, is undoubtedly manipulative. In his pursuit to understand his sexuality, he attempts to manoeuvre people through their desires in order to figure out what he wants and get it. Since he doesn't know what he wants, he's obviously fairly unsuccessful, but still he tries to make people like him and possibly even love him. We've all met a Nandan in our lives - we may have even been a Nandan at some point. The ideas and values he espouses about sexuality, gender and relationships are definitely not a good definition of these identities but they do feel like an honest depiction of an adolescent attempting to understand these issues and himself. (A different book might have had Nandan learn from an elder about these issues; who could also explain the harm his behaviour can cause — but, for better or worse, I believe this book was always more interested in questions than answers.)

The book's meandering plot and lack of character development often felt directionless, but again, this felt true to the questioning and 'confused' themes of the main character. You might not like Nandan, or the way he behaves, but I ultimately found it refreshing to see a queer YA novel that didn't expect its characters to get everything right first time.

What I think this book expresses brilliantly is that queer youth have as much a right to a messy adolescence as their straight peers. show less