Book Review: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

5/5 stars

(finished reading 10/7/17)

Cute, dorky, romantic.

When Dimple Met Rishi is a YA contemporary romance which follows two Indian teens living in America. Dimple wants to escape her parents’ wishes for an arranged marriage and instead follow her passion for coding as an independent career driven woman. Rishi loves his Indian heritage and wants to do everything he can to please his parents—including giving up his dream of being an artist and instead follow in his father’s footsteps as an engineer. The novel tells the story of these two teens after their parents secretly set them up at a summer program for young coders. It’s about dreams, tradition, family and love and how our main characters cope with all this.

I LOVED this book! It was so funny, so adorable and so quirky. It is honestly the perfect summer read if you are looking for a cutesy romance this summer. This book is so unique. I loved learning about Indian culture and the diversity within this book. This really added depth to what would otherwise be your average summer romance book. We are shown the pressures that young Indian teenagers are faced and the traditional expectations laid before them.  I think a lot of people aren’t so familiar with all this rich culture that is still very much a part of present day life and it’s important that we know more about them. I certainly learnt a lot about Indian culture and also a little bit of Hindi!

Amongst this we are also presented with the vivid and colourful themes of comics, dancing, photography, books, coding and restaurants. It was such a wild ride with so much going on! I was completely immersed all the way through the story and I adored it all! I got about half way through and found myself slowing down because I didn’t want it to end. I loved that there was so much going on in this novel. It’s great to read a romance that’s just about the romance, but this book offered so much more. It was so much more interesting to read because of this! The plot was also very twisty turvey which I loved. It was, at times, a little predictable; but other times (especially near the end of the novel) I wanted to scream at the pages because everything was going wrong and I didn’t know what would happen next!

The characters were also so striking and memorable and definitely brought the story to life. I loved how headstrong Dimple was, she was passionate about her dream of coding which I really admired. She didn’t want anything to get in the way of her dream and watching her trying to deal with her emotions throughout the novel, I really felt for her. We saw that she wasn’t as strong as she let on. She struggled with many things and this made her even more complex and loveable. I think if everyone were as driven as Dimple Shah, the world may be a better place. She stood up for what she believed and wanted even if this meant hurting her family and friends at times. Rishi was so sweet and loveable. He was so loyal to Dimple and so caring towards her. His loyalty to his family was also admirable but his willingness to give this up for Dimple was adorable. I loved his passion for his artwork and his frustration as to what to pursue was very real and heartbreaking. The romance between the two of them was so unbelievably cute but also very dorky which I loved! I liked how we didn’t have to wait until the very end to see them together because this is what I was expecting but I was so pleasantly surprised when this didn’t happen! I loved how they were so right together, always bringing the best out of each other. This sparkle between them really came across when reading which I loved.

Overall this was just such an original and really enjoyable read. I flew through it and loved every bit! I think you should definitely consider picking it up if you think you might like it because I promise you, you will fall in love with it just as I did! (And I'm also slightly obsessed with that cover, it's gorgeous and perfectly sums up the book!)