Jesmeen Kaur Deo Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Jesmeen Kaur Deo is a bestselling literary fiction author best known for her debut novel “TJ Powar has Something to Prove.”
The author was brought up in the northern parts of British Columbia. Growing up, she used to spend a lot of time daydreaming and making up all manner of fictional stories.

She was also a huge lover of stories, especially anything that tugs at the heartstrings and makes one laugh.

When she is not writing her stories or reading books, she can be found struggling to open jars, playing the harmonium, and biking.

Deo has said that she wrote her debut novel as it was just the type of book he would have wanted to read in his teenage years. As a hairy brown girl with body hair, it was just something she would have taken to as a teen.

She believes it would have helped her accept herself a lot earlier than she did. As such, she wrote the work for young girls who may be just like her that still need this in the modern age.

She intends to help girls grow up believing they are not the inherently unattractive, dirty, or monstrous girls they may be made to believe they are.
In this regard, Jesmeen Kaur Deo found it necessary to write about rigid standards of beauty across the world. She had a belief that everyone could benefit from having an open mind and cultivating a unique sense of what is attractive and beautiful.

Kaur intended to send out the message that not all people have to subscribe to the gendered and Eurocentric view of beauty. She asserts that when we all strive for sameness and exact same beauty standards we become very boring.

In the writing of her debut novel, Jesmeen Kaur Deo was inspired by several authors. She first penned the first draft of her work in 2019 but the ultimate work that would be published was not finished until the middle of 2021.

Once all of the big edits had been documented, it still took Deo more than one and half years to take into account all suggestions. It took her a lot of time since she was also involved in many other things at the time.

Of particular influence and inspiration has to be Jenny Han’s novel “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” It was in that series that she finally fell in love with young adult contemporary works and realized just how much potential the genre had.

While writing her debut novel, she also read several other works such as Lyla Lee’s “I’ll Be the One,” Sandhya Menon’s “About Sweetie,” and Julie Murphy’s “Dumplin.”
The dynamic between the lead and her love interest was to some extent inspired by “A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones,” Jaime and Brienne of Tarth.
The final season of the very popular program had just finished airing when she started brainstorming the draft for her novel.

She found it cool that a clearly ugly woman could have a romance story that is taken seriously. It all comes back to the idea that beauty is not a requisite for one to be desirable.

Jesmeen Kaur Dao’s novel “TJ Powar Has Something to Prove” introduces popular, and pretty debater TJ Powar. Together with Simran her cousin, the two girls find themselves at the center of a meme.

TJ finds herself stereotyped as the typical Indian date and her Sikh cousin is also ridiculed for having too much hair. She gets rid of all her razors and calls off all her waxing dates.

She resolves and comes up with a debate motion asserting that TJ Poward can be beautiful despite having a lot of hair.

But as she tries to prove her point, she is not too sure that everyone will accept her just as she is. However, there is a boy on the other side of the debate who seems to have taken quite a liking to her.

Her carefully crafted sense of self is crumbling and TJ comes to the realization that winning the debate could cost her a lot more. Moreover, she seems to be the harshest judge when it comes to convincing herself of her worth.

The work has something for just about everyone. It has a romance that is full of chemistry between TJ and her nemesis which makes it so easy to root for them.
It has an incredibly relatable, conflicted, and messy lead who does a wonderful job pushing the idea of people being desirable regardless of societal standards that may say otherwise.