Enter Title Here by Rahul Kanakia

Abstract

Reviewed by: Enter Title Here by Rahul Kanakia Karen Coats Kanakia, Rahul Enter Title Here. Disney Hyperion, 2016 352p ISBN 978-1-4847-2387-6 $17.99 R Gr. 9-12 Reshma knows that being a smart, driven South Asian girl isn’t enough to make her stand out in the Ivy lottery, so she is delighted when a literary agent contacts her after reading an article she’s written, asking for a novel. After doing her homework on YA bestsellers, Reshma decides that she needs to experience some of the social activities that normal teens do in order to give her work a satisfying narrative arc. Reshma is anything but normal, however; she is extremely cynical and calculating, especially when it comes to maintaining her valedictorian status in a situation that seems to favor white students. She has already sued her school for discrimination when they tried to change the rules of the game she is determined to win at any [End Page 76] cost. In fact, her actions throughout the year shed light on the ambiguity of justice and morality in a system rigged for appearance and social connections; even the definition of hard work is thrown into confusion as, having been burned by traditional definitions of diligence, she puts more effort into working the system than toward studying. At the center of her determination is a wound she bears on behalf of her parents, whom she feels were swindled out of a fortune by a savvier business partner; both sides of the story come out, and it’s difficult to figure out who has the better claim to outrage. There is humor in the metafictional elements of her research for her novel, but it is ultimately mingled with pathos and an edgy discomfort at the realization that Reshma, for better and worse, is always going to get exactly what she works for, no matter the sketchiness of her methods. Readers willing to have their conventional ideas of how the world works thrown into the spin cycle are the audience for this. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois