96 Words for Love

Gr 10 Up–After being accepted to UCLA, Raya starts to wonder if that is where her true passion lies. Right before her beloved Daadee passes away, she tells Raya that she has left something for her and her cousin Anandi at the Rishi Kanva ashram in the Himalayas she had stayed at in her youth. Raya decides that this is her opportunity to find herself and who she is meant to be, so the teen convinces her parents to allow her to live at the ashram with her cousin for a month. While solving her Daadee's mystery, she meets Kiran, a boy she desperately doesn't want to fall for on her journey to self-discovery, but does, and she meets a slew of other people who change her for the better. All of the characters in this story are well fleshed out with their own internal conflicts. Throughout, readers are also told the story Shakuntala and Dushyanta and how their love story parallels what both Raya and her Daadee have experienced. This is a readable, relatable story that touches upon social justice issues, such as sex trafficking, which at times feel like vehicles in place only to move the love story along.