Book #86: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

I was drawn to read this one because it was a YA romance with two Indian lead characters, which I thought was neat, and I am always interested in something a little more diverse than just the same old same old YA romance. Dimple Shah goes to a summer coding camp in San Francisco and meets Rishi Patel there--only to find out that their parents have been arranging their marriage and hoping they would meet there. Dimple is COMPLETELY against marriage in general (at age 18) and arranged marriage in particular, so this starts them off on the wrong foot. But they quickly get to know each other and overcome their differences.

So, the first half of this book was CUTE. Cute cute cute. They have a bad misunderstanding about the whole arranged marriage thing in the beginning, but then they have to get over it and get to know each other through the coding camp, and begin to fall in love. I loved how that all happened and really enjoyed it all, even if it was relatively predictable/unsurprising (but I guess all romances pretty much are?). But it started to fall apart for me close to the end. The things that bothered me:
-The author never actually writes about them working on their coding or attending class or working on their project. According to this book, they spent the whole six weeks going on dates, hating the popular kids in their group, and preparing for the Bollywood dance they performed at the talent show. No coding is ever mentioned, which is weird, since Dimple is apparently OBSESSED WITH CODING and nothing is as important as coding, ever.
-Dimple's personality really got to bugging me by the end. She was super anti-Rishi, but then in like a day decides, actually, no, I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. Then she decides, no, this is moving too fast and I don't want to talk to you ever again. Then she decides, but I really love you. Seriously, I had whiplash from trying to follow her random decisions about their relationship that had no prelude or warnings. Rishi was way more understandable, but Dimple really did not make sense to me.
-The author writes really in detail about the first three weeks of their coding camp, and describes all of their dates super clearly and really shows how and why they fall in love. Then all of a sudden, you turn the page, and the camp is over. She completely cops out and you turn the page and they're all like, "Wow, I can't believe camp is over! I can't wait to find out who won the prize!" She gave up on helping to build up to it all and skipped over a TON of important information, I felt like. Not cool.
-Both Dimple and Rishi were way over the top in their expressions of love for each other. I don't know, I never talk like that. Also, they both had their insides turn to liquid like 5 times and that was really overdone.

Overall, the second half of the book totally ruined it all for me. It was going really well and then I lost interest and was just groaning through the rest of it trying to push through without stabbing Dimple in the eye.