Rani Choudhury Must Die

De: Adiba Jaigirdar

Narrado por: Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, Shubhangi Karmakar

Meghna and Rani used to be friends. Now they're bitter rivals. Or are they?

When Meghna fails to make it to the final round of a competition but her boyfriend Zak and her rival Rani do, she thinks things can't get much worse. Until she discovers Zak has been cheating on her. With Rani.

Soon she realises Rani is also a victim and they team up to expose Zak as a cheater in front of all the judges he is so eager to please. And as the two girls grow closer, they begin to question their feelings for one another and why they ever became enemies in the first place . . .

Rivals team up to get revenge on the boy who wronged them both in this sapphic YA enemies-to-lovers novel by award-winning author Adiba Jaigirdar.

©2024 Adiba Jaigirdar (P)2024 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

A shaklow but entertaining story

I can definitely say that I am not the target audience of this book (I'm an adult), but I do think this is a solid contemporary YA read with great representation and cultural aspects.

Rani and Meghna are ex-best friends who reconnect when they find out their boyfriend is the same person and who cheated on them both. They team up to get revenge and beat him in a young scientist exhibition. They want to create an app that can be used to catch cheaters and provide mental health advice.

Unfortunately, Meghna's character is quite annoying. She hates Rani for a reason that is not explained enough to justify the level of hatred coming from Meghna.
Rani is a lovely character who tries to be the voice of reason in many situations to counteract Meghna's fire and stubbornness.
Their reconnection through the revenge plot is the main focus of the book. Their friendship needs healing, and they slowly start to trust each other once again.
The sapphic romance plot is a bit out of the blue at the end, but I did see some very subtle signs we're heading that way, mostly in Rani who's lesbian coded (it's not stated in the book) and who has a thing for Meghna from the beginning even if she doesn't recognize it.

A big part of the story is the Bangladeshi representation. Both Rani and Meghna are very proud of their Bengali origins, and their culture plays a significant role in how they act. The parental expectations, the common discrimination against them because they are dark skinned, and much more. These themes are significant but not overpowering in the book, which is still very much lighthearted.

There are some great side characters in the book, too, who mostly try to be the voice of reason.

One thing that I couldn't really get behind is that two bright and talented young women decide to get revenge on a boy throwing away their great ideas about climate change and their culture. It's almost diminishing to women in STEM when they are portrayed in such a shallow way.

Overall, an entertaining read.

The narration was a bit weird to listen to because one of the narrators was way slower than the other and with the dual POV it was just strange and a bit annyoing.