Sandhya Menon’s heroines are badasses. They splash cold coffee over obnoxious boys (When Dimple Met Rishi), produce genderswapped retellings of Dracula (From Twinkle, With Love), rescue raccoons and go on protests (10 Things I Hate About Pinky). They often inhabit spaces dominated by men—as coders, app developers, filmmakers and entrepreneurs. “I don’t want to tell sixteen-year-olds that love is all you need,” Menon announces on our Zoom call. The YA romance novelist is at her Colorado home, clad in a black turtleneck, sitting in front of a wall sporting framed covers of her bestselling novels. Menon believes romance can provide “medicine in a sugar pill” and weaves meatier themes—mental health, mother-daughter relationships, class differences— into her novels. And now she’s moving on to writing for adults.
THE WRITE MOVE
Before she became a full-time writer, Menon was a therapist and dealt with adolescents. So writing romcoms for young adults came to her almost organically, but not without her share of trial and error. Ten years ago, she was self-publishing under a pen name. “I wrote everything under the sun, even dystopian fiction,” she laughs. This was good practice to find her “voice” and the rest she says is “kismet”.
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