A Review of When Dimple Met Rishi

If this cover doesn't put you in a better
mood, I don't know what will!

When Dimple Met Rishi is a novel by Sandhya Menon. Dimple Shah is a computer nerd who likes coding and programming. She has been accepted into Stanford for college next year. This is her way of doing what she loves and escaping her traditional parents and their plans for her. Rishi Patel is a traditionalist, and is going to MIT. However, he's more a creative type, who enjoys drawing and used to make his own comic strips. Their parents have arranged a match between them, and are hoping the two of them will hit it off during a summer course before college.

At it's heart, this book is about ways in which old-fashioned traditions can be adapted for our modern day. The arranged marriage in this book is more similar to the way in which my parents might introduce me to a family friend at a party. It would be nice if we hit it off, but it's no big deal if we don't.

I loved how Dimple was the one really interested in coding, taking it seriously and really not looking for a relationship, and Rishi was the one who was more romantic and artistic. He claims to be a practical person but... ha. I do feel like their relationship switched from friends to love incredibly quickly, however. Maybe it was just a necessity because of how quick this book goes and their six week timescale? Also, they do have the cutest meet-cute ever. The two cutest meet-cutes ever.

However, Dimple can also be judgemental. She judges Rishi for being more into tradition, and her mother's Indian friends for the same reason. She judges the rich teenagers before she knows them. And I like it! It's good that characters can have flaws.

Hindi is used in this book, often where it would make sense, and the reader is often able to work out from context clues what the sentence above meant. It's a clever way of slipping in parts of the language to make these characters feel real.

I do wish we'd seen more of the coding side of things. After a brief few chapters, the technology aspect isn't really focused on at all. Instead, the course holds a talent show around the midway point, and most of the pages are dedicated to the characters practising for that and their burgeoning relationship. You don't really get a sense on how the development on their app is going, and since it was for something important to Dimple, I wanted to know more about it.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a lightly funny, romantic summer read!