TITLE: Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating
AUTHOR: Adiba Jaigirdar
GENRE: YA Contemporary, LGBT+
WORD/PAGE COUNT: 352 pages (Kindle edition)
PUBLICATION DETAILS: by Penguin Random House on May 25th, 2021
Blurb from Goodreads:
Everyone likes Humaira “Hani” Khan—she’s easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can’t be bi if she’s only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she’s in a relationship…with a girl her friends absolutely hate—Ishita “Ishu” Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She’s an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.
Despite their mutually beneficial pact, they start developing real feelings for each other. But relationships are complicated, and some people will do anything to stop two Bengali girls from achieving happily ever after.
Adiba Jaigirdar’s debut novel ‘The Henna Wars’ was about two queer teenage girls from culturally diverse backgrounds falling in love against a competitive school backdrop and examining deeper themes like homophobia, racism and cultural appropriation. Her new book ‘Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating’ is also about two queer teenage girls from culturally diverse backgrounds, also features a school competition in the form of Head Girl elections and also examines social issues. Formulaic? Quite the opposite!
Some authors pivot after writing their first book and jump to something completely different like writing for a different age group or in a different genre. This author has written another sapphic YA novel which could’ve easily been a re-tread of her debut (and honestly, there aren’t enough books in this niche, so you wouldn’t get many complaints!), but instead she impresses by taking a similar sounding premise and spinning it off into an entirely new direction.
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