Monday, June 18, 2018

When Dimple Met Rishi - Sandhya Menon

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"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."

Rishi and Dimple meet at Insomniacon, a summer program dedicated to coding and app development. The catch--Rishi is there specifically to meet Dimple, since their parents have arranged their marriage, but Dimple has no idea Rishi even exists. As you can imagine, their relationship gets off to a rocky start. Fortunately, it improves from there, but the pair are so different, is a real, successful relationship even possible for them?

I was pretty split on this book, and ultimately I think it's only meh. I liked Dimple, Rishi, and especially enjoyed reading about Rishi's brother, but most of the characters were pretty one-note, stereotypical, and not terribly well-developed. I loved the premise of a teenage girl being interested in coding and pursuing her career over romance, but the execution fell flat for me, especially since virtually the entire book is her being starry-eyed over Rishi. If you're going to tell me someone has no interest in a romantic relationship, you can't have her bowled over by some dude she barely knows with almost no build-up.

More than anything, the book was just too long. I was into it at the beginning, but after Dimple starts enjoying Rishi's company a few days into Insomniacon, nothing really happens. It's just chapter after chapter featuring more of the same until you get to the end of the book and suddenly things get exciting again and are hastily wrapped up. I wish there had been more character development, more time devoted to Dimple actually working on her app and developing her coding skills, and a little less time devoted to how their hearts beat harder when Dimple and Rishi looked at each other. I wouldn't discourage someone from reading this, but there are definitely more compelling stories out there.

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