Over My Head Reviews

Over My Head has more than 1.2 million fans on Wattpad! Here’s some praise for my contemporary young adult novel

*”Marie Lamba brings a fresh, new, and very authentic voice to this fabulous young adult novel. Coming of age has never been done so well!”
— LA Banks, New York Times best-selling author of The Vampire Huntress Legends series

*”Marie Lamba strikes gold with Over My Head – a funny, touching, and at times heart-breaking Young Adult novel about the search for love. Gorgeous prose, deep insights and a wonderfully rewarding read. Highly recommended!”
— New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry

*Sweet Contemporary YA with an Indian Twist
“There’s a lot to enjoy about Over My Head. I truly appreciate how Sang’s heritage is Indian. Ethnic diversity and multiculturalism in YA is something we can definitely use more of. Also, after reading so many books about beautiful paranormal girls falling in love with even more beautiful paranormal boys, it’s just wonderful to read about a totally normal girl. Because normal, average girls are worth knowing and worth reading about.”
—  All-Consuming Books blog review by Tiger Holland

*Full of Fun Characters and Twists
“Rarely have I encountered an author skilled enough to really get inside and sixteen-year-old mind and pull the reader along with them. All the crazy emotions, lack of focus, lack of maturity while trying to be an adult, and insecurities of wanting to fall in love….all in one. Altogether this was a good read, full of fun characters and twists. The author combines the serious event with the less important ones in a way that you never get too depressed, nor do you get frustrated with the flightiness of the teenage mind. The romance is light but fun. Altogether I’d say its more about a teenager figuring out what love can mean in its many forms rather than finding your true love. A good read and fun.”
— Clean Romance Reviews

*an entertaining contemporary YA
“…all of the members of Sang’s family are well-drawn and pleasantly three-dimensional… Sang herself is wonderfully realistic. She’s passionate and impulsive and sometimes thoughtless, but she has a good heart, which is always obvious, and a strong love for her family. She doesn’t always get things right, but the reader is left feeling that she will learn from her mistakes and grow into someone admirable in the end… Over My Head is a strong contemporary offering, with an interesting, multi-layered plot and a likeable cast of characters. Marie Lamba deals with cultural conflicts with warmth and sympathy, while accurately representing young love, with all its accompanying mistakes and embarrassments. A solid read.”
—  Agrippina Legit blog review

*highly crafted anxiety-producing, believable
We long for the protagonist of “Over My Head” to learn and become wise as she tries to steer through the difference between romance and sex. We want her to find some wisdom, avoid mistakes, and make the right choice. The reader knows what the character does not yet know, a perfect equation for powerful dramatic tension… Fiction writers…have the ability to slow time down and take us into moment by moment details. That’s what Marie Lamba did in “Over My Head” when she focused on Sang’s romance. Fiction gave her the artistic freedom to take readers all the way into the situation in a highly crafted anxiety-producing, believable, and enlightening way.
— Memory Writers Network, article by Jerry Waxler, “Million Dollar Challenge: YA Fiction is Coming of Age”

*all the elements of teenage self discovery
This is a refreshing YA book. It has all the elements of teenage self discovery with the extra pressure of the tug of war between East Indian values and growing up in America. Sang successfully navigates the minefield of discovering her own identity as a teenager/adult and an American/Indian. It was well written, easy to read and the characters were relatable. Marie Lamba was able to effectively portray that awkwardness that EVERYONE feels when trying to convey how you feel about someone or even say those 3 little words. Now I have to read the rest of the series!!
— Strathcona Library, as posted on Amazon.com 

*needs more books like OVER MY HEAD
The YA world very clearly needs more books like OVER MY HEAD, where the main character is of mixed race, culture is an important part of the story, but the story itself is not about accepting one’s culture or battling people’s ignorance of your culturally different family… Marie Lamba gets numerous kudos for portraying the Jumnal family in such an empathic and rich way…younger readers will most likely find a bit of themselves, their frustrations and their desires, in Sang, and cheer this promising young lady on.
— Stephanie Su of StephSuReads