Release Date: June 12th, 2022

Genre(s): Young adult fiction, contemporary

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Pages: 288

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Content Warnings:

Cancer, deceased family member, homophobia, alcohol use, racism, workplace harassment

Thank you to Fierce Reads and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced finished copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis

The Bold Type meets Younger in How Maya Got Fierce by Sona Charaipotra, a YA fish-out-of-water contemporary novel!

Ever since she was little, farmer’s daughter Maya Gera has known what her future holds.

The heiress to a mini garlic empire in the heart of Gilroy, California, she’s meant to be a good Indian girl — which means agriculture school, an MBA, and settling down with a suitable Sikh boy.

So spending her 17th summer at cow camp in New Jersey is a really big deal. Farm kids nationwide convene to learn to milk cows, shuck corn, and, uh, form ‘strategic alliances.’ But when Maya gets kicked out of camp after an expensive accident — yes, it involves a boy — she scrambles to save face and keep her parents from finding out. Hard to do when she owes the school thousands of dollars.

Desperate to earn enough to pay off her mistake, Maya interviews for an internship at Fierce, a fashion magazine she’s been obsessed with forever. When she lands a gig as assistant features editor, it’s a New York City dream come true. Especially because she rocks at it.

But it might soon become her worst nightmare — because the Fierce folks think she’s 26.

And just wait until her parents find out.

Review

How Maya Got Fierce turned out to be a quick and fun summer contemporary for teens and young adults alike. While this book took some time to set the stage, I was really able to appreciate that later on as I really felt for the characters in this story.

I really loved the representation throughout this story. Coming from New York, I can’t say I know much about the agriculture industry, so having a story around Desi families and farming was really interesting. In the first half of How Maya Got Fierce, we really get to know the characters and how their families’ businesses impact their lives in so many ways.

But then there’s Maya’s adoration for journalism and Fierce magazine, and these two worlds came together in such an unlikely, yet wonderful way. As I read, I wasn’t sure how this book would end off, but it was better than I expected.

A lot of what made the pace pick up for me was wanting to know how Maya would untangle her lies. I do think a little bit of suspension of disbelief has to go into reading this given that Maya’s pretending to be almost ten years older in a position that would have required past experience, but for the messages that came out of this book I feel like it was worth it. We all have stories to tell, and from so many unique perspectives. When I started my first job, I was encouraged to ask why we did the things we did at the company – since I grew up around technology, my perspectives were embraced, knowing that I could have ideas that could change things for the better. Maya was able to do this too, but by sharing the stories of populations that were less often heard.

There was definitely some second-hand stress trying to figure out how Maya would pull it off, and you can definitely feel that through her. But her passion for the magazine really came through as she strived for better representation in the magazine, and despite some of the questions I had about the odds of this kind of situation happening, the overall message of this book made it so worth it.

Goodreads |Bookshop

Review: Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka

3 Comments

Tessa on July 18, 2022 at 7:19 am

This has so many unique aspects to it. It does sound very intriguing. Excellent review!

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Suhani on July 18, 2022 at 10:07 am

oooh I loved your review for this, and the book looks so so good!!!!

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- julieanna on August 1, 2022 at 10:57 pm
  
  Thank you! It was a really fun one 😊
  
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Review: How Maya Got Fierce by Sona Charaipotra

Content Warnings:

Synopsis

Review

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