Rani's journey will speak to anyone who has ever had to fight to protect and preserve their personal identity amid our modern world. Rani Kelkar has never lied to her parents, until she meets Oliver. Perfect for fans of Sandhya Menon, Erika Sanchez and Jandy Nelson. It was everything I wanted, from Rani realizing she and her cultural values deserved some respect, to her trying to sort out her dueling identities in the context of her family, their expectations, and what she needed to do to make herself happy. A luminous story of a young artist grappling with first love, family boundaries and the complications of a cross-cultural relationship. Winner of the national Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Emerging Voices award, Anuradha Rajurkar takes an honest look at how cultural differences can transmute an interracial relationship into something unrecognizable as love. I absolutely LOVED the last 20 of this book. There, she gains perspective on what it means to be true to herself and what that means for her and Oliver. Rajurkar’s debut presents a bittersweet, searingly honest view of an Indian American teenager’s journey. Just when their relationship is tested by a shocking betrayal, a family tragedy draws Rani to India for a summer. Rajurkar is the award-winning author of American Betiya (Knopf) an ALA-YALSA Best Book of 2022 and on Cosmopolitan's list of 125 Best YA Books of All Time.

They begin a torrid, secret love affair, but when Oliver's troubled home life unravels, he starts to ask more of Rani than she knows how to give. The same qualities that draw her in-his tattoos, his charisma, his passion for art-make him her mother's worst nightmare. Fans of Sandhya Menon, Erika Sanchez and Jandy Nelson will identify with this award-winning novel of a young artist’s forbidden, intercultural first love, her close-knit Indian family, and her boyfriend's desperate attempts to fit into it-no matter how high the cost.

American Betiya by Anuradha D. Rajurkar