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
Buy it – Amazon
I had very high hopes for this book. The cover is cute, and the premise sounded like something up my alley. Well, I bought it about a year ago and attempted to start it then…and couldn’t do it. Then I started hearing bad reviews, and more people speaking up about why they disliked the book.
I gave this one two stars. I feel a bit dumb buying the second book in this ~world~ From Twinkle, With Love. But I’ll read and review that one as well.
I had four main issues with this book, some that other reviewers didn’t really mention.
1) There was no plot.
Instead of focusing on the coding competition, this was a story about Dimple and Rishi meeting and falling in love. It’s about them getting to know each other.
And that nagged at my head the entire time I read the book. Most of these scenes needed to be deleted and replaced with moments of the two doing actual code. Dimple is constantly talking about how much she LIVES for coding, but she never actually does it in the book.
Rishi loves to draw, and we always see instances of him drawing.
Makes me think the author doesn’t know much about coding? Which is fine, cause I don’t either. But that’s why you research.
As for the romantic aspect? It was whatever. I preferred the romance in My So-Called Bollywood Life. To be honest, I’m starting to realize why I calmed to dislike YA romance back in high school. There’s always something missing? Like the author isn’t really going there. Degrassi TNG type going there.
And Rishi was rich. Dumb rich. Which is a common trope in romance novels. But I’ve never seen it in a YA and I read it like ?!?!?!? Why does this 16 year old have a beemer??
2) It was long. A large part of my dislike came from the page length. I said above there was no true plot, and the coding competition wasn’t necessarily mentioned or talked about. So why was this book 400 pages? No idea. I really wanted to finish this, but a lot of the scenes were unnecessary and I skimmed them.
3) The POV changes. I hate POV changes that don’t occur chapter by chapter. In this book, it would be Dimple for a paragraph, then switch to Rishi for two paragraphs, then back to Dimple. I didn’t like that. I didn’t ALWAYS need to know what Rishi was doing.
4) I didn’t like either Dimple or Rishi.
Rishi seemed too weak, and not like a real person. His brother? Seemed like an actual teen, but Rishi was weird as hell. And Dimple was pretty mean for the first 60% of the book. For no reason. And she was mean to people, but expected them to be NICE to her?
Odd. Like when she first went to dinner with the Amberzombies. I get that one of the guys licked his tongue at her (?), but that’s no reason to go INTO people having an entire idea of who they are and stereotyping them because of how they look, their parent’s money,etc.Girl, have an open mind and try to make some friends at least. Give them the benefit of the doubt. She stereotyped them, and they turned around stereotyped her right back.
I also don’t think it was funny making jokes about Hari not know what part of India his family came from. Something about that made me mad.
Dimple seemed so stuck in her ways, that she was never truly challenged to grow up and sop being rude. Rishi bended to EVERY demand Dimple had, and had no real backbone. Like with the talent show. She REFUSED to dance for a long section, but insisted on the dance and told Rishi he’d need to do most of the song.
Dimple throwing coffee on Rishi wasn’t exactly BAD, just extra. Like why would she do that? I was more concerned with her hitting him so much.
Two Stars! Can’t wait to read Twinkle’s story.
assia
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