Dimple and Rishi #3

10 Things I Hate About Pinky by Sandhya Menon

Publication Date: July 21, 2020

Summary from NetGalley:

Pinky Kumar wears the social justice warrior badge with pride. From raccoon hospitals to persecuted rock stars, no cause is too esoteric for her to champion. But a teeny tiny part of her also really enjoys making her conservative, buttoned-up corporate lawyer parents cringe.

Samir Jha might have a few…quirks remaining from the time he had to take care of his sick mother, like the endless lists he makes in his planner and the way he schedules every minute of every day, but those are good things. They make life predictable and steady.

Pinky loves lazy summers at her parents’ Cape Cod lake house, but after listening to them harangue her about the poor decisions she’s made (a.k.a. boyfriends she’s had), she hatches a plan. Get her sorta-friend-sorta-enemy—who is a total Harvard-bound Mama’s boy—to pose as her perfect boyfriend for the summer.

When Samir’s internship falls through, leaving him with an unplanned summer, he gets a text from Pinky asking if he’ll be her fake boyfriend in exchange for a new internship. He jumps at the opportunity; Pinky’s a weirdo, but he can survive a summer with her if there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

As they bicker their way through lighthouses and butterfly habitats, sparks fly, and they both realize this will be a summer they’ll never forget.

ARC provided by Simon and Schuster via NetGalley for an honest review.

I would like to start off by saying that while this is a third book, it is, like the other two, a novel that can stand on its own. You don’t need to have read the other two to enjoy this one. Characters from the other books are mentioned but are not part of the story. That said, unlike the first book in the series which I loved, I had some issues with this one.

The book starts off ok, I kind of liked Pinky, although I found her to be somewhat irritating. She is very self centered and has a hard time seeing things from other’s perspective. She does have a nice relationship with her dad, but is often at odds with her mom. This relationship is at the center of the plot of the fake dating trope. I also had a hard time with Pinky and Samir’s relationship, it just fell flat for me. Although there were some cute moments that they shared, it overall just didn’t work for me. Samir is a bit a bore, to be honest. But the two do balance each other out. Also his relationship with his mom was a bit puzzling to me. She is suppose to be over protective of him, yet she lets him run off alone to DC for the summer? Sorry not buying it.

I also had a lot of issues with the plot, not the fake dating one, in truth that was the only one that worked for me and that I enjoyed. The subplots were really big issues for me. Dolly, Pinky’s perfect cousin, makes some really bad decisions because she wants to be bad? Pinky adopting a pet possum also just didn’t work for me. Pinky is suppose to be someone with a lot of good causes, including rescuing animals, and yet she makes this huge error when it come to the possum. The saving the butterfly habitat also did not work for me. There were just lots of gaping holes in that story that didn’t make sense. And then finally there is the big part of the story of Pinky and her mom not getting along. When we finally find out why Pinky’s mom is so hard on her, I just had to roll my eyes. Can’t get into why, no spoilers, but it just didn’t ring true to me. And it was resolved way too quickly at the end of the book.

In the end though, if you are looking for something light and with a bit of a fun romance then you might give this one a try. If you are looking for a romance with a bit more substance, you might look elsewhere.