Title: When Dimple Met Rishi (Dimple and Rishi #1)
Author: Sandhya Menon
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication date: May 22nd, 2018
400 pages
3/5 stars
Goodreads Synopsis
Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?
Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.
The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?
Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.
Review
**Read via audiobook**
When Dimple Met Rishi tells the tale of… well… when Dimple met Rishi! Dimple just graduated from high school and is getting ready to attend Stanford and become a coder. But, all her mom wants is for her to find the Ideal Indian Husband and get married. That’s where Rishi comes in. Rishi wants nothing more than to get married and please his parents. Dimple and Rishi’s parents set it up so they meet at a web design summer program, but only Rishi knows this and Dimple is thrown for a loop. The book follows their story.
Okay, so this was a very generic YA contemporary book. Dimple is “not an ordinary girl”, which is a huge and sometimes annoying theme in YA. She’s kind of not a great character, and is frankly pretty selfish. Rishi deserves better, though I do believe Dimple starts to get better by the end of the book and realizes some of her nonsense is… nonsense.
The plot was about this web design camp… but we never actually get to hear about the camp?? They are there for 8 weeks and you hear about it only a few times in filler conversation. The book is more about where they are eating dinner and working on a talent show act that is inexplicably a part of a web design camp?? I have questions.
Throughout the book I just wanted to yell at Dimple and say, “You’re allowed to date and ALSO attend school to have a future and a career – it truly is possible to multitask! The two are not mutually exclusive!!” So much of the book wouldn’t be necessary if she understood this very simple concept.
Overall, it was good but nowhere near great. If the feeling ever strikes, I will give the companion novels a try – but I’m not thinking that will be any time soon. Rishi was the upside to this entire story because he was so pure of heart and wanted the best for everybody. I would read more about Rishi for sure.
Happy reading, folks!
Baltimore Bibliophile 