Hey, everyone! I hope y'all are having a great day, and today I'll be reviewing
When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon. I've heard so many great things
about this book, and I think Simon & Schuster's really go with ham with the
marketing for this book, and for good reason--it's a pretty special novel. I did
have a few issues with it, but it's one those books where I see the appeal. Like,
I can understand why someone would really, really love this book, and so I
appreciate it for what it's worth. When Dimple Met Rishi is a story about two
Indian-American kids, a girl named Dimple and a boy named Rishi, who are both about
to head off to college--Dimple to Stanford and Rishi to MIT. Dimple is an
ambitious girl who wants to be the top of her field of web development and
coding, and she resents her mother's constant nagging for Dimple to find her
"Ideal Indian Husband." Rishi is going to MIT to study computer
science and engineering, but he's actually really passionate about drawing
and art, and unlike Dimple, Rishi isn't really opposed to tradition or customs,
and instead, he embraces that and sees it as a source of beauty. So both
Dimple and Rishi head off to this summer camp competition for app development
called Insomnia Con. So Rishi goes to Insomnia Con to woo Dimple, who is
actually his potential future wife in a suggested arranged marriage, but the
thing is Dimple has no clue that her parents have set up this arranged marriage
and she has no idea who Rishi is. And the rest knows of this novel follows the
relationship between Dimple and Rishi over the course of this six-week
summer camp, and there are heavy doses of romance and humor as well as great
themes like culture and identity. So I loved a lot of things about this story.
Firstly, of course, I have to talk about the diversity element. Our two leads, both
Dimple and Rishi, are Indian-American and that experience is written in such an
authentic manner. Being raised in an Indian family really affects a lot of
things in your life, from what you wear to what you eat to the movies that you
reference to the way you view your life plan and your role in your family
dynamic and so on and so forth. And Sandhya Menon depicts that layered
experience very deftly and very seamlessly.
I also thought that she was very careful and very respectful about the topic of arranged
marriage. Something I learned about in one of the classes I've taken in college, in
one of my Women and Gender Studies classes, is this idea of
cultural relativism, and cultural relativism was a term that I'd heard
before and I knew a little bit about it, but I didn't really put it into practice and
I didn't have to put it into practice until some of the topics that we covered
in that class. So after learning about the value of actually implementing
cultural relativism in that course, it made me read When Dimple Met Rishi
in a kind of different way. I think Sandhya Menon does a great job of representing
cultural relativism through her character of Rishi. So take a thing or a
concept that the more Western perspective might find backwards or
sexist, such as arranged marriage, and Rishi takes that and he explains the
value that that kind of practice might have to a people of a different
background. So the fact that Sandhya brings that perspective through Rishi's
character was very interesting to read about because I think a lot of us, like
Dimple in the book, have very Western mindframes and we have very progressive
ideas and we think that things like arranged marriage are very outdated and
backwards and unfair. And of course there's an argument for that and there's
validity in that opinion, but what's really refreshing is that we also get to see
the other side of it and we get to see the value of this kind of practice or we
get to see someone who appreciates it for what it's worth, and we get that
through Rishi. And speaking of that particular Women and Gender Studies class,
something else that we talked about is what it means to be a good feminist and
how much of a struggle that actually is. So this particular WGS professor that I
had, she was obviously very feminist, but she also is married to a man and has a
child and wears dresses and heels to work, and she really falls into all these
different gender stereotypes, these stereotypes and these practices that
other feminists are trying their hardest to destabilize. But does that make her a
bad feminist? Given that we're all feminists, are we bad feminists if what we
desire and what we're actively working towards is a gender stereotype or a
traditional idea of what a female should be? Sandhya Menon brings up this
discussion through her character of Dimple, who is very outspokenly feminist, very
eager to call out her mother for her mother's misogyny. Like I said before,
she's an ambitious girl and she really loves coding, which is a very heavily
male-dominated field. And she rejects this idea of prioritizing romance and
finding a husband in favor of building an impressive career. She starts off very
intent on making decisions for herself and only herself to further her career
and her education. However, as her relationship with Rishi
goes on, she has the struggle of wanting to focus on her career but also wanting
to invest in this whirlwind romance. If she wants to dress uncharacteristically
girly for a date with Rishi, does that make her unfeminist? If what she ends up
choosing is romance, if she is making her decisions keeping in mind the
considerations of pursuing and continuing this relationship with Rishi,
is that unfeminist? If she sacrifices parts of her career for this boy, is that
unfeminist? That's such an interesting and nuanced discussion that I haven't
really seen discussed very often in YA literature and so I really applaud
Sandhya for incorporating that kind of topic into her novel. The romance is, if
you couldn't tell, the main element of the story. The actual plot--this summer
camp competition--kind of does take a backseat and Sandhya Menon really focuses
her craft and her attention on this blossoming romance between Rishi and
Dimple. The thing about writing about love is that it is so fertile for
beautiful writing and Sandhya Menon really takes advantage of that. She uses a
lot of creative and gorgeous figurative language when describing the romance
However, that being said, it can be a little cheesy and a little overdone sometimes.
And I have a theory that the detection of how cheesy the writing is, is really
dependent on how much you buy into Rishi and Dimple's romance. I think about this
a lot when it comes to Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, which is my favorite
Rowell book and one of my favorite books of all time. In that book especially,
Rainbow Rowell writes a lot of seriously heavy, deeply emotional, very romantic
stuff, and I ate it all up because I loved that relationship and I
really believed in it. For Rishi and Dimple, on the other hand, I couldn't
always stomach it because I wasn't really completely on board with their
relationship. I think the main reason that I wasn't really convinced by the
relationship between Dimple and Rishi was really just because I had so many
issues with Dimple. I can really understand the appeal of Rishi. He's such
a sweet and thoughtful boy, kind of like Cricket from Lola and the Boy Next Door,
just out of world thoughtfulness and kindness. So I
can understand loving Rishi, but Dimple, on the other hand... She's just kind of
infuriating. I felt like she was just so self-righteous. She lacked that same
empathy and sensitivity that made Rishi so charming and appealing. Dimple was
very wishy-washy, she was very judgmental, she was very harsh. She hits Rishi a lot,
too, which I don't think is cute at all. Like, here's a tip: try not to hit
people. Here's another tip: if you hit someone and you don't mean to physically
hurt them and they wince anyway, you probably hurt them, and you should
probably stop hitting them. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are so many things
about Dimple that are admirable, but overall, I just couldn't get behind her
character, and so reading all this mushy gushy stuff that Rishi thinks about
Dimple--it just didn't gel with me. Something else that I wasn't that big of
a fan of was the [third person] dual point of view. The narrator switches in short bursts
between Dimple's point of view and Rishi's point of view. I think I would've preferred
just being in one person's mind to the entire time, and if we did stick with
dual POV, I would have preferred longer sections from each person's point of view,
because when you have such short bursts of each character's point of view, we're
kind of being shown all the cards and there's not really anything left to guess.
There's just too much instant gratification, I think. Something that's
extremely nitpicky and I, like, can't even believe that I'm bringing this up in a
review, like it shouldn't be that big of a deal but for this book it was, was
chapter breaks. I don't think I've ever mentioned having a problem with chapter
breaks in a review before, but in this book, the chapter breaks made no sense
and they just ended up really irritating me after a while. Like, who in their right
mind is paying attention to chapter breaks, right? No one, because they're
usually not noticeable. But in this book, the chapter breaks drove me insane. The
chapter breaks honestly served no purpose. Sometimes, there'd be a chapter
break, but on either side of the chapter break, it was the same scene in
the same person's point of view. You literally, you literally could have
deleted the chapter break and it would have been a continuously flowing
paragraph. Like, why would you break it up there? I don't get it. Like telling
literally the next second of a scene in the same person's point of view, but
there's a separation there. You had to change chapters there.
I don't get it. [dying of frustration] I don't get it. And the more
frequently it happened, the more frustrated I got. And believe me, I get it,
I hear it. I hear how ridiculous I sound, complaining about something like chapter
breaks, but I--I just didn't get. I don't--I-- Why? Why would you start a new
chapter when it's been same exact scene from the same exact character's point
of view? Okay, moving on. Dimple and Rishi each get a lot of care and a lot of
attention from the author. But the side characters tend to be a little
lackluster. Most of the side characters just felt very dimensionless. There's a
character named Isabella, who is kind of an antagonist, and she has a little bit more
depth than what we get to see initially, and I honestly would be pretty
interested in reading something from her point of view, because from that little
bit of depth that we get to see, she seems like a really fascinating
character. So if Sandhya Menon ever feels up for writing a spin-off book about her, I'd be
down. So there are a lot of great things going for When Dimple Met Rishi. A side note:
I'm a little upset that the girl on the cover isn't wearing glasses, because Dimple
does wear glasses. But yeah, this book has a handful of really great things going on
for it as well as a few things that just didn't work out for me. I still think
Sandhya Menon is a very promising writer, and if this book sounds like something
looks up your alley, I would recommend giving it a read. If you have already
read this book, please let me know what you thought of it in
the comments below, I would really really love to hear your thoughts. Thanks so much for
watching, I hope y'all have a fantastic day,
and happy reading. Bye!
[outro music: "Summer Moments" by Del]
For more infomation >> ¡Las razones por las que México perdió ante Alemania! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 5:30. 
For more infomation >> ¡Rosie Rivera habla sobre el abuso sexual que sufrió! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 3:42. 
For more infomation >> ¡Acompáñanos a disfrutar con la nieve de verano en Sochi! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 2:43. 
For more infomation >> ¡Sorpréndete con la vista al restaurante Séptimo Cielo! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 1:58. 
For more infomation >> Flamenco, un ritmo muy español pero con un toque ruso | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 4:16. 
For more infomation >> ¡Chile es la esperanza para vengar el honor de México! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 1:59. 
For more infomation >> Kate del Castillo da consejos para evitar la deportación | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 2:47. 
For more infomation >> Kate del Castillo alza su voz contra el gobierno mexicano | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 1:29. 
For more infomation >> Recetas de cocina: Cómo hacer Tostadas de Pollo | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 4:49. 
For more infomation >> ¡Yandel confirmó que habrá nuevos temas junto a Wisin! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 2:21. 
For more infomation >> ¡Aprende cómo hacer peinados de moda con trenzas rusas! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 5:20. 
For more infomation >> ¿Será verdad que Daniel Sarcos está enamorado de Rashel? | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 2:39. 
For more infomation >> El horóscopo de hoy, 30 de junio de 2017, por el astrólogo Mario Vannucci | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 3:24. 
For more infomation >> RAMO DE NOVIA: Cómo elegir el tuyo según tu look - Duration: 10:34. 
For more infomation >> WHO LOSE SING | DIAMANTITO - MIKECRACK - Duration: 10:01. 
For more infomation >> 14 mass-spring-damper in Simulink / Matlab - Duration: 2:23. 
For more infomation >> Activación Cartilla Pedagógica Sitios de Memoria. Región de Antofagasta - Duration: 5:46. 
For more infomation >> SPOTCAST VR - Productvideo - Duration: 0:31. 
For more infomation >> Манник простой рецепт - Duration: 2:19. 
For more infomation >> Простой рецепт блинов на молоке - Duration: 3:07. 
For more infomation >> #24시간:에이핑크·NC.A·업텐션·마마무·몬스타엑스·나인뮤지스·블랙핑크·NCT 127·티아라·iKON·아스트로·펜타곤·인아·소울라티도·그레이시 - Duration: 2:14. 
For more infomation >> Hyundai i10 1.1 I-DRIVE COOL AIRCO TREKHAAK - Duration: 0:52. 
For more infomation >> Toyota Yaris 1.0 VVT-I Aspiration 5drs. // Bluetooth / Navi / Camera / Climate control - Duration: 1:00. 
For more infomation >> Opel Zafira .ZAFIRA 1.8i-16V COSMO AUTOMAAT OPC LINE PAKKET AFLEVERINGSKL - Duration: 0:54. 
For more infomation >> Updated frizzy hair routine for wavy hair + ebook update - Duration: 7:20. 
For more infomation >> Ori an the Blind Forest Definitive Edition | Part 1 | The Journey has begun - Duration: 24:45. 
For more infomation >> MSNBC's Joe and Mika Bizarre Accusation of Trump Using 'National Enquirer' To Blackmail Them - Duration: 32:38. 
For more infomation >> NIOBONEWS - O UBER DO PHOTOSHOP! - Duration: 5:00. 
For more infomation >> Lion Uma Jornada Para Casa 2017 DUBLADO - Duration: 1:58:33. 
For more infomation >> Homofobia na FND - Duration: 5:23. 
No comments:
Post a Comment