Hello you gorgeous individuals, it's Kav here and today I'm going to be talking
about The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta. The Serpent's Secret is a
middle-grade novel about a 12-year old, Kiranmala, who essentially is just
living her regular life in New Jersey until her parents are taken and she
finds out that she is actually an Indian princess. I was lucky enough to receive
an ARC of this novel from the lovely members of the Diverse Book Bridge team which
is an amazing organization that I think we should all be supporting. I am so, so
glad I received this ARC because this is a book that has been on my radar for a
while, but I wasn't sure that it was one that I was going to jump up and get
immediately until I received this ARC and I literally fell in love with it. As
this is an ARC review this is going to be spoiler free, so I highly recommend
that you stay here and watch the entire thing to find out all of the reasons this
is an incredible novel that I absolutely cannot wait to be out in the world.
Growing up, when I went to things like the Scholastic book fairs at my school
or anything, the books on the bookshelf never had characters who looked like me.
The extent of my memory of representation growing up is one time I
picked up a book with an Indian main character from my library and that was
just because the plot appealed to me, this wasn't a mainstream book in any way,
and that's essentially the extent of my memory of representation. When I went to
things like book fairs at my school or to places like the library or to
children's bookstores or anything, the books there never had characters who
looked like me or who came from the same heritage as me or anything, and you don't
think that impacts you, but it does. It has a subconscious impact on you.
Regardless of all the other amazing aspects of this novel, and trust me, this
novel is literally perfect in every way, but regardless of all those other
aspects - what I am most excited for is for the kids out there who are going to
go to those Scholastic book fairs or to their school libraries or to children's
bookstores and are going to see this book with a character who looks like
them on the cover and with a character who has a name like them, who comes from
the same heritage as them - and this is going to be revolutionary for so many
kids out there, it's going to be the book that kids let me needed and never got. I
cannot wait for that to happen. The way DasGupta represents Indian culture in
this book is done so well. The elements of this book really come primarily from
Bengali culture and I am not Bengali, so I can't speak on that, but it is own
voices representation, so I'm not too concerned about it. From what I did see
and how she tied in the negatives and positives of Indian culture, it was just
done perfectly. The main character comes from New
Jersey and she talks a lot in the novel about how she was embarrassed of her
parents. Like I mentioned at the beginning, when you never see yourself on
the bookshelf, when you never see a character who looks like you on a book cover, when
you never see someone with parents like you on a TV show - when you live in a town
where everyone comes from a different culture than you do, it does impact you.
And the way that the author represented that in this novel was so relatable to
how I felt as a kid, and it's something that I'm still sad I felt about as a kid,
but the way she put that into this novel and she then tied it towards making the
main character actually be proud of her culture and show her that her culture is
pretty cool was just done so beautifully and is definitely what made this novel
what it was for me because it was done so well. But whereas I could go on and on
about the representation in this novel because, trust me, it's fantastic, there
are so many other amazing aspects I also have to cover. So let's start with the
characters: As you all know, I'm a very character-driven person. Characters are
what take me in a novel and it actually took me a while to realize how much I
liked the characters in this book. When an adult writes a middle-grade novel or
a YA novel, I'm always hesitant to read it because I'm always wondering "can
they actually get in the mindset of a 12-year old or a 14-year old?" and DasGupta
did. She wrote a realistic 12-year old and I don't know how she managed to
get in the mindset of a 12-year old, but this book actually sounded like a 12-
year old's thoughts and it's written in first person, so that makes it even harder to
actually get in that mindset, but she definitely, definitely did and I really
felt like I was reading from the perspective of a realistic 12-year old. And I
also think that besides the mindset of the main character, how the main
character herself was constructed and how the side characters were constructed and
her parents and everything was done realistically - they had good parts to
them and they had bad parts to them. They were created realistically. Sometimes
it's hard to really create a realistic cast of characters in a fantasy novel
because there are heroes and there are villains and it's hard to do that
realistically, but she definitely did. Furthermore, the relationships she
creates between these characters was also just so realistic, they just were
also real. This novel is set in this fantasy world with all these different
aspects that we can't relate to, but she managed to keep it real by having these
characters and these relationships that were real. And speaking of fantasy, I also
have to talk about how amazing the plot and world-building in this novel was
because the world-building by far takes the cake for me as the best part of this
novel. Creating a fantasy world is hard and it's especially hard when it's the
first book of that fantasy world because you can get into the mistake of info-
dumping a lot. It's obvious that the author took the time and the effort to
actually create a world that she was proud of or that really seemed like a
good fantasy world. There are so many intricate details and elements of this
novel and the way it ties together fantasy with Bengali culture and with
actual scientific elements is just beautiful and it creates this amazing
world that I cannot wait to be more immersed in. Just the creation and the
development of this world as we got to see it through the main character's eyes -
we got to see her discover this world and we got to see her grow to be
comfortable in it, so we also kind of grew to be
comfortable in it with her because we kind of got to go on this journey with
her. We learned about the world with her, so it didn't feel like all this info was
coming at us, it felt like we were gradually experiencing
this world and we were learning it with her and by the end of this novel I
feel confident that I know this world well enough, maybe not to go into it
because I don't really want to, but I know this world well and that's because
of how she developed it and how she added all these intricate details into
it that I'm just amazed at the outcome of this unbelievable, incredible
world she created. Now I don't really want to get into the plot because, as I
said, this is supposed to be spoiler free, so all I'm gonna say is the plot is just
as good as all these other elements, so I plead that you support this novel. I know
it's going to impact so many Indian kids out there and even more so, it's just a
good book. It's a book you're going to enjoy - I'm not someone who reads a lot of
middle-grade and I am not someone who read a lot of fantasy, but I enjoyed it
in spite of those elements, and honestly, because of those elements. I think that
she made those elements enjoyable for me and I think that if I said that I
enjoyed this novel, I can bet that quite a few of you will too.
I will also leave my Goodreads review of this novel linked in the description
below and I will leave links to where you can purchase this novel if you have
the ability to do so. It is out on February 27th. And with that, I'm going to
conclude this video. Thank you all so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed it -
if you did, please give it a like and subscribe because that stuff makes me
happy and comment down below whether or not you are going to be going ahead and
getting this novel. And as usual, all of my social media and my Goodreads will be in the
description below if you'd like to follow me anywhere else. Thank you all so
much for watching, I hope you're having a lovely day or night wherever you are,
please remember you're beautiful and you deserve the world, and I will see you soon for a
new video. Goodbye!
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