REVIEW: When Dimple Met Rishi - Sandhya Menon

Title: When Dimple Met Rishi
Author: Sandhya Menon
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 380
Source: Audiobook

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. 

I really enjoyed this book. It’s not usually something that I would pick up without the influence of booktube and bloggers, but I decided that the good reviews were just too good to ignore. I loved the story and the characters, but I felt the main love story in itself wasn’t strong enough and the background was too much... background and could have been pushed to the forefront a little more. 

Dimple & Rishi were both really interesting characters in themselves, and I thought their romance blossomed quite nicely. It wasn’t insta-love that we’re all so used to (thank god!) but it was also a little bland. It wasn’t fleshed out enough, it was cute and it was a quick little book but I just felt like it needed MORE. 

I loved the concept of the summer program for web developers, it sounded so cool. I just wish we could’ve seen more of that! I wish they would’ve gone into more detail about what they were working on, I wish it wasn’t a complete love story. I just wish there was more depth and other things going on as well. It was just so lacking and boring at times. 

I really did enjoy the romance in this book, it was different, it wasn’t typical and cringey. It was cutesy and fun. I loved the diversity in the book, FINALLY we get to see something other than a typical white American love story. Again, I wish there was more. I wish we could’ve met her family, his family, I wish there was more than just arguing with her parents over the phone. 

There was such great potential with this book, but all it really amounted to was being light and fluffy. It was disappointing. However, as a light and fluffy contemporary, it was a nice read.

I rated this 3* on Goodreads! 

What did you think of this book? Will you be reading Sandhya’s next novel? I think I will be!