Book Review :: When Dimple Met Rishi, by Sandhya Menon

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
ISBN: 9781473667402
Published by Hachette NZ
on 13th July 2017
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 384
Source: Hachette Publishing NZ
Find at Hachette NZ
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Meet Dimple.
Her main aim in life is to escape her traditional parents, get to university and begin her plan for tech world domination.

Meet Rishi.
He's rich, good-looking and a hopeless romantic. His parents think Dimple is the perfect match for him, but she's got other plans...

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.

Told from the dual perspectives of two Indian American protagonists, Dimple is fighting her family traditions while Rishi couldn't be happier to follow in the footsteps of his parents. Could sparks fly between this odd couple, or is this matchmaking attempt doomed to fail?

Last updated on 7 June 2022

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What is When Dimple Met Rishi about?

When Dimple Met Rishi is the story of Dimple. She’s headed to a web developer’s summer program before she heads to university and she could not be more excited. 6 weeks without her overbearing mother who just wants her to find the Ideal Indian Husband? Yes please.

But on day one of the best summer of her life, she gets accosted by a young man and his marriage proposal.

That young man is Rishi Patel. Unlike Dimple, he knows that both their parents are trying to set them up, and the best way for that to happen is if Rishi joins Dimple at the summer program and is paired up with her for their big project.

But Dimple wants nothing to do with him. All she wants to do is focus on winning the app-making competition and get in with the best in the business so she can get a head start in the coding web developer world. Rishi’s charm and friendly attitude start to sway her towards him, and she realises that actually, he might be perfect for him.

As the weeks go by, their (eventual) friendship blossoms into something more. There are ups and downs, and pesky brothers, and friends trying to get in with the ‘in crowd’, and a whole lot of Bollywood dancing, but things seem to be going okay. For now.

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My thoughts on When Dimple Met Rishi

When Dimple Met Rishi was a very fun book. It was a great length, it clipped along at a reasonable pace and the characters were pretty excellent. I loved Dimple and her desire to get ahead in the developing world – she’s a coding nerd, but still wants to create apps and programs which help people, namely her Diabetic father. She’s stuck between wanting to thrive in the American world she’s grown up in, and her cultural traditional Indian background.

Rishi is the opposite. He loves the tradition of his Indian culture and wants to do right by his parents. He longs to find a wife and settle down, and if that means waiting a while for Dimple as she comes to terms with that then so be it. Along the way, we discover his talent for art and out comes the Little Comic-Con moments of geekdom and it’s brilliant. The struggle for Rishi is that he loves his art and the geeky world, but he’s off to university to study engineering, which will get him far in life, but it’s not what he loves.

Among their cultural and traditional struggles, they end up falling in love. It’s an arranged marriage that isn’t, but it is…but it isn’t. It’s confusing, and yet so simple at the same time.

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Overall thoughts

I seem to be raving about this book, and yet I only gave it four stars. What I didn’t like was that the main reason they were there – competing and learning in the web developer world – was suddenly overshadowed by a talent show that had nothing to do with the learning aspects of the program. It was like a big social night but Dimple and Rishi started learning a Bollywood dance. I’m all for Bollywood dances, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like the lead up to the talent show became the book. It took up way too much focus for a pair of people trying to win a coding comp. I was looking forward to be being about the technology and the development of apps etc, but it was sort of lacking in that aspect.

But other than that, it was a very good book and I recommend picking it up, especially if you like books along a similar line to Rainbow Rowell, Jenny Han and Nicola Yoon (according to Goodreads).

Have you read When Dimple Met Rishi? 

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Thank you to Hachette Publishing NZ for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.