Review: When Dimple Met Rishi // The Cutest YA Romance I’ve Read in a While

By Sandyha Menon

Rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Goodreads Community Rating: 3.79

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publication Date: May 30th 2017

Format Read: Hardcover

Goodreads Summary: 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.

Overview

first, let me apologise for going MIA for like 10000 years. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again, life is just a weird amount of busy right now so i’m having trouble prioritizing.  Anyways… now onto the review.

THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD! I wasn’t really sure what to expect, because everyone seemed super hype about it, but it was YA, which sometimes gets overhyped for absolutely no reason, or else is just way too cliche for me to read without banging my head against a wall.

but this book, although it had some classic YA stereotypes/tropes (obviously, it was a contemp romance) it managed to do so in such a way that everything felt very very real and raw. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun, lighthearted read with relatable characters.

Characters

Dimple was one of my favorite female protagonists i’ve ever read, and that’s saying a lot. Her story and emotions and passions were so real and recognizable, I felt like she was a real person. First off, she LOVES coding. It’s super rare that we can get a badass fictional female that also happens to be a nerd, but in this case, it was done very well. Dimple rebels against her parent’s more traditional beliefs, because she wants to do more than just get married, have children, and become a housewife. the story did a great job of acknowledging both Dimple’s beliefs and her parent’s in a way that allowed me (a very white, somewhat culturally ignorant American) to see the validity in both sides of the argument.

The other MC (and love interest) Rishi Patel, was equally as amazing. Rishi is super smart and going to MIT next fall (HEY! THAT’S WHERE I GO!) but his true passion is art. And he’s really good at it. He also happens to adamantly believe in the traditions that Dimple rebels against, which could be a recipe for disaster, or just a really good story.

Rishi and Dimple both have family issues, but rather than this being a way for the author to cut their parents out of the book, it becomes central to their personalities and behaviors, which I think is part of why I loved this book so much. Rishi and Dimple are both in the summer before college, which is roughly where I am in life, and so the reasoning behind their feelings and conflicts resonated with me.

Also, it’s important to note that this is own-voice Indian-American representation, which is super rare in YA books! so even more reason to support!

Plot

The plot of this book sounds really simple, which is part of what made me nervous to read it, but there managed to be lots of intricacies and details and things that made the book very worthwhile.

Basically, Rishi and Dimple have been set up for an arranged marriage for a while, but neither know about it, and they haven’t met. but they both enjoy coding, and so they go to the same camp and their parents try to get them to meet. Sort of. Only Rishi (who loves the idea of an arranged marriage) knows, but he thinks Dimple also does, and so when they meet it’s… awkward.

From there, the two form a friendship (?) and struggle through the rest of the coding camp together.

There’s lots of drama, but it doesn’t seem artificial or forced at all, because all of it comes directly from character’s emotions and stereotypes and feelings that they would very seriously have.

I’m probably turning everyone off in this super long review but basically i love this book and can’t talk about it enough.

Recommended for you:

Writing Style

This book was told from a dual perspective of Dimple and Rishi, which was very cool because it added to the suspense and allowed you to understand the way both were feeling at any one time. I don’t think the book could have worked without it, because both of their emotions were so complex and detailed and it made the reader love both of them more by hearing the thought process.

Menon managed to create two distinct voices for Dimple and Rishi, and so it was easy to get into the minds of both of them.

Summary

Basically: READ THIS BOOK!

It has all of the elements for a perfect light read that will leave you smiling for hours afterwards. Just Do It (am I sponsored by Nike yet?)

Have you read WDMR yet? Are you excited for Menon’s next book? If you loved WDMR, what other books would you recommend?

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