Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot - Hardcover

Chhibber, Preeti

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593461886 ISBN 13: 9780593461884

Verlag: Kokila, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

This laugh-out-loud debut romance introduces perfectly imperfect Payal Mehta, whose plan to get her longtime crush to finally notice her is destined for success, but only if she ignores her budding feelings for her archnemesis...

Payal Mehta has had a crush on popular, athletic, all-around perfect Jonathan Slate ever since he smiled at her in freshman–year Spanish class. At a party during spring break of her junior year, Payal finally works up the courage to ask Jon to hang out. However, her romantic plans are derailed when he vomits on her Keds. Twice. But when Jon offers to take her out to lunch as an apology, Payal is convinced this is the start of their love story. 

Over chalupas and burritos at Taco Bell, Payal's best jokes are landing as planned. Jon is basically choking on his Coke—and then it happens. "Do you have a boyfriend?" Payal is (finally) about to get the guy. And then he tries to set her up with his Indian friend. Payal's best friends, Neil Patel and Divya Bhatt, are just as mad about the microagression as Payal is, but they think she’s a little too hung up on him. 

Determined to teach Jon a lesson by making him fall for her, Payal ropes in her archnemesis, Philip Kim, to help. It’s the perfect plan. Minus Philip’s snarky, annoying quips and lack of faith in its success. But as Payal lies to the people she loves, hides the too-Indian parts of herself in front of her crush, and learns that maybe Philip isn't the worst, she starts to wonder if what she's been looking for has been scowling at her all along...

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Preeti Chhibber is a YA author, speaker, and freelance writer. She also used to work as a publishing professional. She has written for SYFY, Polygon, BookRiot, BookRiot Comics, The Nerds of Color, and The Mary Sue, and others. Her first book in her original Spider-Man trilogy, Spider-Man’s Social Dilemma, was released in July 2022, and her Marvel Comics debut in Women of Marvel #1 came out in March. She also writes the Avengers Assembly series. She co-hosts the podcasts Desi Geek Girls and Tar Valon or Bust. She’s appeared on several panels at New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, and on screen on the SYFY Network. Honestly, you probably recognize her from one of several BuzzFeed “look at these tweets” Twitter lists.

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Chapter One
For twenty minutes I’d been holding this red SOLO cup of the most sickly sweet nail polish—smelling vodka-and-red-juice mixture. Holding ingestible paint thinner wasn’t something I’d planned on doing with my evening, but . . . there were thick lines of black Sharpie spelling the name Jonathan Slate on its side. I mean . . .Jonathan-­freaking-­Slate! And so, I’d keep holding it while the party around me kept going. I’d been there for a few hours already and had been on the cusp of making a round to see what was happening poolside. Instead, the cup and I stayed, standing against the ugly brocade wallpaper for—­oh, twenty-­one minutes.
No worries. I could do this all day. I would stand here forever, if I was being honest. It was Jonathan-­freaking-­Slate.

Twenty-­One Minutes Earlier
I’d been taking a minute to enjoy the general debauchery around me—­picture almost any show on a premium cable network and you’re halfway there already—­when it happened.
“Hey, Pie, hold this for a sec. Thanks, I owe you.” His words were slurred and rushed, so it took me a second to parse his meaning. But by then Jonathan Slate’s fingers had brushed mine as he handed the cup off to me. And obviously, we fell in love . . . or, I fell a little more deeply into my three-­year crush on a white boy who sometimes said nice things to me but by all accounts might not even know my real name. Which is Payal. PIE-­yuhl. Not Pie. (Footnote: My parents would never name me after a dessert pastry. Wait, no, one of my childhood nicknames was “Ladoo”—oh no. My whole life has been a lie.)

Jon didn’t wait for a response before he stumbled off, but that was okay. The world works differently when you’re a six-­foot-­tall Adonis in a button-­down shirt and fitted jeans. You don’t generally have to conform to the same set of social rules as the rest of us mere mortals. Besides, maybe he did wait for a response and I was too busy trying not to drool to notice. (In case it wasn’t immediately clear, people considered me to be a very cool person.)
Listen, Jon Slate was it. I’d had a crush on him since freshman year. He was in my very first high school class, and our Spanish teacher assigned us as partners on the very first day. I’d taken one look at his blue, blue eyes, sun-­kissed cheeks, and surfer boy–­blond hair and was gone. Then we didn’t speak again for six weeks, but he smiled at me every day . . . or at least smiled in my direction. And one time, he gave me his pencil. Not lent, gave. It was magical. I still had it. I loved him.

Back to Now
I wasn’t entirely sure how I ended up at this party. It was the kind of thing my parents might actually kill me for attending. It had all the elements of a grounded-­for-­the-­rest-­of-­my-­natural-life-­and-­whatever-­lives-­came-­after-­that event.
Alcohol? Besides the aforementioned vodka-and-red-juice drink, two kids I kind of recognized from school standing next to me were googling “How to shotgun a beer.” I leaned over to peek at the search results and shook my head. They’d probably get distracted by a full Wiki on the history of shotgunning beers if they didn’t move to YouTube­.
Drugs? Janet Kwon was about to take her turn with the joint going around a circle of people, but—­oh, there it is. I winced. She dropped it in her beer. Yikes.
Sex? . . . Probably? It hadn’t gotten to a point where people were actually doing it in the open, but I was pretty sure it was happening somewhere. The house was one of those gigantic McMansions with a million rooms that littered South Florida thanks to the super-­duper rich who moved here to build big, ugly houses. Which leads us to . . . 
No chaperones. Rachel Finley’s parents weren’t even in town, and hadn’t been for a while, as far as I could see. They were on a yacht somewhere (or in Paris or Prague or who knows? . . . I don’t know how extremely wealthy people live).
So here we were, in a giant house filled with teenagers making bad decisions. Seriously, I’d just seen the rest of the pot smokers herd into the kitchen to microwave the beer-­soaked joint. Bad choices all around! (Not me, though. My decision to hold on to this cup was going to lead to something big. I knew it.)
“Finn! Finn! Not here!”

Actually, you know what? I did know how I ended up here. The boy laughing and talking to Finn would be Neil Patel. Neil, who was currently trying to stop his boyfriend from taking his shirt off in a room full of people, had been my best friend for a million years. (Footnote: This tracks as factually correct because of that whole reincarnation thing.)

Several hours earlier, he’d done his dirty work. We’d been lying side by side on the grass in my backyard, trying to get some sun without Rajeshri Auntie noticing and immediately revealing her colonial roots by yelling at us for getting “too dark.” (Footnote: Colonialism, classism, and colorism persist in the twenty-first century; we do not love to see it.)
It was early enough in the Florida afternoon that the humidity level was actually acceptable. Instead of sweat and stickiness, there was a comfortable warmth on my skin.
“Neil, we are not going to Rachel’s spring break party. She is awful. Are you forgetting that she called you ‘Neila’ for the entirety of freshman year?”
He turned to me, expression lazy and eyes half-­lidded in the bright light of the sun. “Payal, you have to let things go. Rachel and I are certified besties now. The bullying is obviously over.”
I gave him my best disbelieving side-­eye. “Oh, are you? I take it she doesn’t know you’re the one who left her parents the anonymous tip about her I’m-­grounded-­but-­I-­need-­to-­go-­to-­Coachella crowdfund?”
Neil sat up and looked completely aghast. “I was being a good friend. Who knows what goes on at those rowdy festivals? She could have gotten hurt.”
“Oh, so it was in her best interest,” I said, playing along with Neil’s sarcastic response.
I was honestly surprised the American Dream Queen’s parents stopped her from doing anything, because she did not act like someone who understood that her actions had consequences—­but then I found out she was grounded because she’d wrecked her dad’s car, and her only punishment was that she couldn’t go to Coachella­. Explanation finished, Neil lay back and threw an arm over his eyes. I propped up on my elbows so that I could look down my nose at him.
“Besides,” Neil added, “I can’t help that now she thinks it’s cool to have a gay best friend. Why shouldn’t I take advantage?” I could see his lips quirk up. Typical.
“Take advantage of what? The party is going to be terrible and loud and awkward,” I said.
“No way. It’s going to be awesome. She has a pool and lots of expensive booze.” Okay, fair point from Neil.
“Philip Kim won’t be there, right?” I forced myself to ask, frowning at the thought of my school nemesis. Neil shot me a dry look.
“In what world does Philip Kim go to parties? He hates everyone except his nerdy holier-­than-thou...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kokila
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593461886
• ISBN 13: 9780593461884
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien