Review: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

**Disclaimer: Copy received from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Whew, where do I start with this one? I loved it.

When Dimple Met Rishi has been on my must-have releases of 2017 since I first heard of this book. This is the story of Dimple, an aspiring coder, who finally convinces her parents to let her go to Insomnia Con, a 6 week programme for coders, before she heads off to Stanford in the autumn. What Dimple doesn’t know is that her parents have only let her go so she can meet Rishi, a boy they approve of and wish for her to marry.

First things first, I loved the Indian references in this book – Dimple and Rishi are both Indian-American and I feel like I learned a lot about their culture just reading this book, from Bollywood references to the expectations placed on Dimple and Rishi by their respective families. And talking of their families, this is one YA book with realistic and present families throughout.

Dimple is a great character – she doesn’t conform with society’s expectations of her, shunning makeup and even traditional Indian clothes, and she is confident that she doesn’t want a boyfriend and wants to focus on her career. Rishi is also fully fleshed-out – he’s a hopeless romantic and traditionalist who has his heart set on marrying Dimple before he’s even met her. He’s also destined to study computer science, despite his love for comic artistry.

I loved the fact that this book is the older end of YA – Dimple and Rishi are both spending their summer before college/university at Insomnia Con. I loved the feel and tone of the book; it’s really something special, and it has that summery first-taste-of-freedom element to it.

If you like YA contemporary, this is a gorgeous summer romance that brings something new and refreshing to the YA table, and it has to be one of my favourite releases of the year so far.

View all my reviews

If Noah Can’t Even were a TV Show…

It’s Thursday 18th May and it is my turn to host the Noah Can’t Even Blog Tour! Thank you to Scholastic for inviting me to participate and Simon James Green for writing the book and this blog post!

 

If Noah Can’t Even was a TV show…

This is good fun! What if Noah Can’t Even was a TV show? Who would my dream cast be? Casting a TV show is actually quite a long and complicated process, so I’m going mainly on visual references here, or actors I’ve seen play similar types of role, who I love.

Noah

The casting of Noah would be crucial. In my head, he looks a bit like Asa Butterfield – especially in shots where he’s wearing glasses. Noah is geeky, but sweet, with dark hair – and, of course, he’s a bright, intelligent boy. Asa’s maybe a little younger than 16 in some of these pics, but you get the idea…

Harry

Harry’s a bit taller than Noah, has slightly cooler hair, and, as Noah mentions, ‘the beginnings of proper arm muscles.’ He’s a real ‘boy next door’ type – very sweet, with beautiful eyes. I’m thinking someone a bit like Logan Lerman – but a British, 16-year-old version.

Josh Lewis

Josh is 19 and the hottest lad in school… only there because he’s agreed to put Uni off for a year to help out the sports team… obviously. Everyone looks up to him and admires him. He’s pretty much perfect – physically, anyway. Definitely has very distracting abs. Oh, it’s really awful having to search the internet for pictures like this… um… how about someone like KJ Apa? (But again, KJ Apa doing a British accent, or else a Brit version of him!)

Sophie

Intelligent and sophisticated Sophie takes Noah under her wing and doesn’t mind when he’s massively awkward with her in all sorts of situations. Everyone needs a Sophie in their lives. There’s a fab British actress called Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness (she was in the Ab Fab movie) who might just fit the bill…

Eric

Short, greasy, and pretty disgusting in so many ways – Eric is bad news. He’s the school blackmailer, with underworld connections and a habit of knowing what everyone is up to and using it to his advantage. He’s not like this in real life at all, but Craig Roberts in this role in Being Human, has always been my reference for how Eric looks.

Jess Jackson

School ‘bad girl’ Jess Jackson is bad news for Noah. But, boy, is she popular with everyone else! She spends a lot of time making sure she looks great, and she’s got a super-mean streak. This actress is American again, and her hair colour doesn’t quite match the description in the book, but I rather like Madelaine Petsch, who can currently be seen playing Cheryl Blossom in Riverdale.

Gran

Good old Gran! Always there for Noah, she’s great at giving him good advice… most of the time! She’s not old enough, but maybe with make-up and her great acting skills Julie Walters would be a good choice here? I’m a huge fan and she’s so funny, I think she would play Gran brilliantly.

Huh. All this talk of casting has got me excited for a TV series or movie of Noah Can’t Even! Let’s keep our fingers crossed, shall we?!

Simon James Green

Simon James Green grew up in a small town in Lincolnshire that definitely wasn’t the inspiration for Little Fobbing – so no-one from there can be mad with him, OK? He enjoyed a classic British education of assorted humiliations and barbaric PE lessons before reading Law at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he further embarrassed himself by accidentally joining the rowing team despite having no upper body strength and not being able swim. When it turned out that being a lawyer was nothing like how it looks in Suits or The Good Wife, and buoyed by the success of his late night comedy show that involved an inflatable sheep, he travelled to London to pursue a glamorous career in show business. Within weeks he was working in a call centre, had been mugged, and had racked up thousands of pounds worth of debt. Finding strength and inspiration in the lyrics of Tubthumping by Chumbawumba, he eventually ended up working on a range of West End shows and UK tours, co-wrote a feature-length rom-com for the BBC and directed Hollyoaks for C4 / Lime Pictures. After trying really, really hard, he also managed to write Noah Can’t Even. If you are interested in stalking him, he still lives in London, where he spends a lot of time telling people that Noah Can’t Even is only partly autobiographical, and his mum has definitely never done a Beyoncé tribute act.

http://www.simonjamesgreen.com
@simonjamesgreen

 

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I did! Noah Can’t Even is out now, published by Scholastic.

My Dream Book Panel!

Recently, I was inspired by the lovely people at Eventbrite who asked me who I would want to see at my dream book convention? Dedicated readers will know I’m a huge fan of YALC and I spend way too much time dreaming about attending BEA or YALLWEST over in the U S of A, so it got me thinking… who would I *really* want to see? And what would I want them to discuss?

(And also, why haven’t I purchased my ticket to YALC yet?!)

First up…

I’d like to see a panel on world building with authors who really know their stuff when it comes to creating weird and wonderful fantasy worlds. This panel would be all about writing fantasy, world-building and lots of tips for the audience on how each author works. We’d need only the best for this one so I’d pick:

• V E Schwab, author of the Darker Shades of Magic trilogy
• Laini Taylor, author of Strange the Dreamer
• George R R Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire series

I’ve been reading some super huge books recently, and so I’d like a panel with authors of some huge books to discuss writing fantasy, writing a huge quantity and how they have built their worlds. This panel would focus on authors who publish big books at a superhuman speed and so would feature:

• Sarah J Maas, author of the ACOTAR and Throne of Glass series
• Cassandra Clare, author of the Shadowhunters’ many series
• Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn trilogy, among many others

You can’t have a hyped book convention without some elusive authors with an exclusive talk. This panel would focus on the price and pressure of fame after a super hyped book, and their decision to stay in/out of the limelight. This would be the panel everyone would be clamoring to go to and would feature:

• Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series
• Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games
• J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series

So many fantasies focus on royalty, and I think a panel focusing on the challenges and fun of writing about princesses, princes, kings and queens would be an interesting addition. I’d go for an range of authors, including:

• Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries
• Marissa Meyer, author of the Lunar Chronicles
• Renee Ahdieh, author of the Wrath and the Dawn duology

Now, I don’t think a book convention would be nearly as good without bookish friends and a heap of the amazing UKYA authors which have always made YALC such a special time. These authors I would probably listen to talk about Quorn cocktail sausages, but I’m sure they could come up with a few interesting themes between them!

• Katherine Webber, author of Wing Jones
• Non Pratt, author of Truth or Dare
• Sara Barnard, author of A Quiet Kind of Thunder
• Catherine Doyle, author of the Mafiosa trilogy
• Holly Smale, author of the Geek Girl series
• Lisa Williamson, author of All About Mia
• Alice Oseman, author of Radio Silence
• Sarah Crossan, author of One
• Holly Bourne, author of the Spinster trilogy
• and so so many more amazing authors!

I’d love to see panels on topics such as diversity, mental health, feminism, disability, politics in YA, dystopias, LGBTQ, and so many more – I think sometimes the topic of the panel is what makes it so interesting rather than necessarily the speakers.

Check out Eventbrite’s conference page if you’re interested in hosting and organizing your own events!

So there are a few of my dream book panels! Who would you want to see? What would they talk about? Would you like to see some of my panels? Comment below, tweet me at @annalisebooks or create your own post – I’d love to know!

 

My YALC Reading List: Part 1

I’m sure many of you UK Book Bloggers (and perhaps even some of you from overseas!) have started seeing that the authors that will be attending the Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC) in London in July have started to be announced! I’m still yet to buy my ticket (I should *really* get on that) but I’m already excited to meet new authors and old and new friends.

The first batch of authors was released a while ago and there’s a mix of YALC stalwarts and some new faces.

Last year, I wrote the YALC Reading List, which was a really useful exercise for me to get to know all of the authors at YALC and I went in as a bit of an expert – if I do say so myself – on the authors and their books. This year, I am more experienced in the book blogging world, but if you’d like to see this again, please do comment or tweet at me at @annalisebooks! You can find all my old posts about YALC 2016 on the blog and there’s a link to all ELEVEN parts here.

But back to YALC 2017, here’s the first part of my reading list…

This section corresponds to the authors announced in the first announcement, and there are some amazing authors there whose books I have already read (and some that I’m not interested in reading) so these are my unread titles…

1. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
2. The Other Half of Happiness by Ayisha Malik (Sofia Khan #2!)
3. Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton
4. Windfall by Jennifer E Smith (thank you MyKindaBook for sending me this beautiful finished copy!)
5. The Gilded Cage by Vic James

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? What will you be reading for YALC 2017? Comment below or tweet me at @annalisebooks!