A review by thenovelmaura
Sunny G's Series of Rash Decisions by Navdeep Singh Dhillon

emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Thank you to Penguin Teen for an eARC of this book! I'm sad to report that I really disliked it because the premise sounded so fun. You all know I love diverse, contemporary YA stories, but this read like an unfinished first draft. It seemed like the author had a lot of things that he wanted Sunny and Mindii to do, so he mashed them all together into one night with only the thinnest string of plot holding it all together. And I've never been to Fresno, but can someone explain to me why there were at least 4 cosplay events/parties happening there on the same night, for a fictional book series that is a thinly-veiled cover for Harry Potter (Jamie Snollygoster)? Unless San Diego Comic Con was magically transported to Fresno for one night only, this seemed unrealistic. There were tons of discrepancies like this (like how much food they managed to eat in 5 hours) that really took me out of the story.

Look, I love that Sunny was Sikh and Mindii was Hmong. But most of the dialogue in this book was cultural info-dumping with absolutely no subtlety and no relation to how teenagers actually talk to each other. This is an actual excerpt from the book (keep in mind that I have an eARC and some bits could have changed prior to publication):

"Yeah," Mindii says. "Fantastic documentary. The Donut King, by Alice Gu. Plays on a loop here so at least people can get a bit of a history lesson. Ted Bun Tek Ngoy escapes a genocide in Cambodia, learns about the donut business, buys a ton of donut stores across California, and sponsors hundreds of families who now do the same thing. And it wasn't even to get rich, it was literally just to survive in a country that creates all of these messes in other countries, then is all 'why are all these brown people here?'"

Two paragraphs later, Sunny responded:
"It's like those rags-to-riches stories of the first Punjabi immigrants who came to the US in the early 1900s. They worked on railroads and lumber mills and as farm laborers, and had to deal with so many openly racist laws made just so Asians couldn't make it. And still they took their shot, buying up things through white people they hoped they could trust.... Like how is the Alien Land Law not taught in history classes. Or the fact the Ghadar Party-the revolutionary movement to end colonial rule in British India-was started by steel and lumber workers in Astoria, Oregon, in 1913."

Yes, what a totally normal conversation to be having at a donut shop. What regular, unstilted dialogue from two teenagers who are supposedly flirting with each other. I could maybe forgive this if it was the only time it happened, but this social justice info-dumping occurred roughly once per chapter. Even though I agree with the points made, they were so jarring, so distracting, and made the reading experience super unenjoyable.

I do want to give credit to the author for his efforts to celebrate such a diverse array of cultures while exploring the heavy topic of grief, which is why I rated it two stars. This story had heart but was seriously lacking in execution.
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