Sanskari Sweetheart - Review

Sanskari Sweetheart

By: Ananya Devarajan

Publication: May 20, 2025 by HarperCollins

272 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via Edelweiss (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Goodreads description--Raina needs to win the National Bollywood Dance Circuit Scholarship. That will show her mother that dance can be a financially stable career and prove to her boyfriend and co-captain, Aditya, that they’re still the perfect couple, even if all they seem to do these days is fight. There’s only one problem—Aditya breaks up with her, their Nationals choreography crumbles on stage, and Raina, as well as her hopes of winning the scholarship, is taken right down with it.

All Raina wants is a do-over, so when she wakes up the next morning to a miracle—another chance at Nationals with Aditya by her side—she couldn’t be happier. But as the events of the day start repeating, Raina realizes she’s stuck in a time loop, cursed to humiliate herself at Nationals and then get dumped—over and over again.

Raina is certain that if she follows all the right steps, she can break out of the time loop, win Nationals, and earn back the heart of her one true love in the process. But what if perfection isn’t enough?

I've been on an adult romantasy kick for a while. So I needed a change of pace, and that usually means changing genres. I decided to pick up Sanskari Sweetheart. The description tells pretty much everything you need to know. But I will say some things were confusing or needed more fleshing out for me. I felt the author understood the missing pieces, but they were never fully spelled out to the reader. One of those things is Raina's mom being so kind of a prophetess. That was never explained. Mentioned in passing as though the reader should understand or accept it as fact and move on.

Raina starts the book showing up at Nationals with her mother, whom she just dropped the bomb on that she wants to pursue dance as a career. She doesn't really give her mother a chance to discuss things with her as she drops the bomb and rolls out of the car at the same time. As she's running away, she basically declares that if she wins the scholarship offered at Nationals, then she will choose dance. 

Raina and Aditya have been dating for four years. They're madly in love. Yet they fight all the time. Raina is obsessed with being the perfect girlfriend for him, but she refuses to have any conversation with him about any important topics. The initial breakup felt jarring. I suppose it was supposed to feel that way. The couple went from "we're so in love" to "we should break up" in 0 to 60. Only after exploring many of the loop days do you begin to piece together what's missing in their relationship. I guess that was because Raina needed to figure it out, and as the narrator, it would only be frustrating for the reader to fully understand the issues while Raina continually repeats the same day and the same mistakes over and over again.

Raina does change things up. It isn't like she can't change the day she experiences. But it doesn't matter. Every time she gets to the end of the day she and Aditya break up. Then the day starts over. 

I liked that these two have such an innocent relationship. There is passion between them, but things don't progress physically, and I respect that. It is counter-cultural (American culture at least). And I'm all about that. They have found their person so early in life, which also isn't normal. I can respect that as well. 

I did appreciate the lessons that Raina and even Aditya learned along the way. I don't think I would want to read many books that follow this same format, but overall, I enjoyed Sanskari Sweetheart. A few things were confusing, like Raina's mother's prophecies, why Raina had an obsession with being the perfect girlfriend, and a few other things. But overall, I read this book quickly and wanted to keep reading when I needed to stop. Sanskari Sweetheart gets 3.5 Stars. Have you read Sanskari Sweetheart? What did you think? Let me know!