When Dimple Met Rishi

I would've liked this book much less if it hadn't been for how relatable Dimple Shah's relationship with her Mamma is, tbh. It's like Sandhya Menon held up a mirror and showed me how my mother made me feel. It all got to me...how Mamma hovers, how misogynistic she is, how she makes Rishi feel like her “entire existence is nullified if she doesn't make the effort to look beautiful...nothing else matters—not her intellect, not her personality or her accomplishments; her hopes and dreams mean nothing if she's not wearing eyeliner” and how Rishi Shah is sure the only reason Mamma had agreed to let her go to Stanford was because “she was secretly hoping she'd meet the ‘Ideal Indian Husband' of her dreams at the prestigious school”.
Rishi's fear of domesticity was so familiar. She felt the need to run away from a serious relationship because she didn't want to go down the same path as her parents. She didn't want to get married so young, a marriage her parents had arranged for her, even if she had fallen in love.
There are some obvious red flags - one other readers have pointed out is how Dimple Shah kept hitting Rishi Patel. I've come to take my YA with a pinch of salt, y'all. A lot of the tropes in it are toxic. “Insta-love (I LOVED YOU FROM THE FIRST DAY I MET YOU NO I LOVED YOU BEFORE I EVEN MET YOU)”, “love triangles (TWO HOT BOYS LIKE ME? WHY DOES MY LIFE SUCK SO MUCH?!)”, “I'm not like other girls (I'M A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE AND MY ONLY FLAW IS NOT EVEN A FLAW)”, “over-protective male love interest (I AM HERE TO FIGHT FOR YOU, MY DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, RESCUING YOU FROM NOT ONLY OTHERS BUT YOUR EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE SELF)”, manic pixie dream girl (AKA THE JOHN GREEN FORMULA)...most of them are problematic. I'm not really going to get into that here.
Sandhya Menon said her inspiration was the lack of South Asian heroes and heroines in contemporary YA and I'm grateful for that. It is like every other contemporary YA - with all the worn-out cliches - and I am, for once, glad it is because it sounds like that is what she wanted it to be. Just a story about a boy and girl falling in love, teenagers who aren't from the other side of the world. One for us.