When Dimple Met Rishi

Basic Overview:
Title: When Dimple Met RIshi

Author: Sandhya Menon

Pg. #s: 378

Book Format: Hardcover

My Numeric Judgment:

♦SPOILER ALERT♦
There were no instant fireworks.

Summary:
When Dimple Met Rishi is a quirky tale about traditional and serious Rishi Patel and his quest to woo wild and free Dimple Shah. Dimple is excited to be on her way to a summer program for web developers. After finally convincing her “traditional minded” Mom and Dad to both pay for and allow her to attend, she feels like her family is finally beginning to understand and accept her. After all, what other reason would they have for allowing her to go on a six week coding excursion?

 

Judgments:
This is the cutest book! It is filled with all this teenage angst (from Dimple anyway), poor decision making skills, terrible communication, and the general teenage awkwardness that is first love. Allow me to also add, I love romantic stories where the heroine wants nothing to do with the hero. After all, what better way to say I love you than saying “Stay away from me.”

The book opens with us meeting Dimples family. As I stated in my Man Crush Monday Post about Rishi Patel, I am an Indian in my head. Like not even just oh yeah my family is Indian, No. I am like the most Desi non Indian girl you will ever meet…and yes I do own my own Kajal More because it shows up best with my skin complexion, but I digress. Dimples family, mostly her mom, is very traditional. She is pressured to fit the mold of a Desi girl. Her mom seems to be like every other Mom of a foreign daughter who subtly (Not so subtle) hints that she should be going to University for her Mrs. Degree. I found Dimple’s family very relatable and the description of them gave me great insight on why she is as quirky and focused as she is. We are also introduced to Rishi’s family and although they are equally traditional, it is less noticeable. I still haven’t decided if this is because; 1. Rishi is also traditional so his family being traditional is less noticeable or 2. Rishi is a boy and foreign families tend to be slightly less hard on males than females. Either way, I loved the decision to show the families both Dimple and Rishi came from because it set the base for each character.

This book gave me life for several reasons. First of all the mere mention of Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge (DDLJ) just made me break out in dance because I love that movie…ALMOST as much as I Love Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Second, I loved the coding aspect. I was slightly bummed that it wasn’t explored more through this book. I found it interesting that I had just finished reading Secret Coder by Gene Luen Yang and that taught me the basics of coding, so I was fascinated when this book was about coding and I was unaware.

I also adored the youthfulness in this book. It put me back in my high school days. Everyone says those are the best years of your life, and I still feel like that’s a lie. If anything, I think the summer after graduation is the best time because I have noticed that summer is when a lot of people learn a lot about themselves. I even saw that in this book because Dimple realized so many things about herself and what she really wants in life during that time period, it was inspiring.
The only qualm I have with the book, aside from the coding was the fact that the bullying was kind of …overlooked? I felt like the issues with the Aberzombies was brushed over a bit. I am unsure if that would have fit with the flow of this book but it is something I really wanted to happen.
That aside, this book was fantastic and it proves that

Have you read this book? Did you get pissed at any of the characters? Who was your favorite? Who was your least favorite?
Ciao Book THOTS!