When Dimple Met Rishi (Dimpleverse, #1)

by Sandhya Menon

[Chelsea]

**Actual rating - 3.5

This was SUCH an adorable book to read! I loved the mix of all that Indian culture because I love learning about it. I thought that it was interesting the Rishi was more traditional and Dimple less so. It made for some really great interactions between the two characters.

I though the first half of this book was really great. I love that Dimple was so focused on becoming a programmer (yay girl programmers!) and I thought it was hilarious that Rishi was only there to meet Dimple. And the fact that Dimple had no idea about the whole thing only made it that much better. I found I could relate to both characters in certain ways. Dimple is a female programmer, like myself, which is never easy and there's some bullying at the start of the book. Rishi is an artist, also like myself, who is having a hard time turning that passion into a lifelong career. I loved both of those elements though I wished we could have seen more about them.

I found the second half of the book a little boring. We started seeing more of the common YA tropes. There was the whole rich, white, privileged kids as the "bad guys" of a sort which I'm beyond tired of seeing. It's getting to be really unoriginal. Plus the whole plot towards the end has been seen way too many times before. It was a little bit of a disappointment at the ending for me.

I was also a little disappointed with Dimple. She had this really strong view that she didn't need to get married, she wanted a career first. I respected her for that! But then she meets Rishi and it's borderline instalove and all her views change. There was so much talk about how great her personality was, being so independent, and she ended up in exactly the spot she didn't want to be in.

Mostly, this book was interesting. I love learning about other cultures like I did with this book. I'm always really interested in seeing how different people can be and this was exactly that kind of book.