The reason I loved it so much was in part due to its somewhat predictable but always endearing plot, but more due to its characters. Dimple has far more on her mind than a potential husband–winning the coding competition with the app of her dreams, for example–so her initial interactions with dutiful, family-oriented Rishi are awkward at best, but the two eventually warm up to each other in a twisting and turning plot than can only be likened to a Bollywood movie. Unfortunately, Dimple’s parents use the competition as an excuse to set her up with a family friend’s son, Rishi Patel, in hopes of finding her the I.I.H (Ideal Indian Husband). “When Dimple Met Rishi” is a charming young-adult novel about graduate Dimple Shah, who is desperate to participate in a renowned coding competition the summer before she attends Stanford University. When reading this book, I felt like more than a quiet observer–I was completely immersed in its characters, in its casual references to elements of my life and in the feeling of finally being represented. “When Dimple Met Rishi” by Sandhya Menon quite literally changed my life - and I don’t say that lightly.

I never realized what had been missing from the books I’d read and loved until I picked one up that filled in all the gaps. It was an innocent assumption made by a literature-loving six-year-old who’d never read a book featuring a prominent character of color. Growing up as an avid, Indian-American reader, I assumed all book characters were supposed to be white.

Sandhya menon when dimple met rishi