Love Like That and Other Stories

Breezy tales about first love

When you’re fresh in your teens, the throes of first love tend to hit you with the force of a truck. Love Like That tries to capture that giddy and bewildering rite of passage through 10 stories by authors like Jerry Pinto, Rupa Gulab, Sheba Karim and Milan Vohra. Some of the tales are breezy and engaging. In Vohra’s Sandwich Soulmates, Mahira loses her heart to Prithvi when she discovers that they both like the same Subway sandwich (multigrain bread, hold the disgusting tomatoes, gherkins and jalapenos). Rishad navigates pesky parents and siblings to exchange coded missives with Shanaya in Pinto’s How Not to Date a Twelve-Year-Old, while poetry leads Anjum to her soulmate in Karim’s Love Like That. Considering its target readers, the mush factor is understandably high and the cover bright pink, but some stories veer too far into clichéd territory. Gulab’s Romeo Can Go to Hell has bickering foes Anjali and Ashish cast as Romeo and Juliet. She’s the rebel and he’s the class nerd. No brownie points for guessing what happens next.
Ages 13+Love Like That and Other Stories, Penguin, R199.