3.75/5

It was hard for me to get into this story but once it started picking up, I was completely hooked! This book was just really fun and cute just like Sandhya Menon' s other books. This is definitely one that I'll recommend if you're looking for a cute and impactful book!

10 Things I Hate About Pinky by Sandhya Menon is adorable! Can these two very different teens find love? Read 10 Things I Hate About Pinky and find out! Another huge hit for Sandhya Menon! I love her books!

I read and posted about this awhile back, just didn't update here. I love most of Sandhya Menon's books. They are funny and interesting and I always learn something in it, weather it be about a different culture or something completely random. This book was a lot of fun and realistic.

10 Things I Hate about Pinky is the third book in the Dimple and Rishi series. This book is about Pinky and Sam. Pinky doesn't get along with her mom. She feels like nothing she can do is good enough and her mom doesn't understand her. When they go to their summer vacation home the barn catches on fire, and her mom immediately blames Pinky. In order to show she is responsible she invites Sam to come and pretend to be her boyfriend for the summer. Pinky and Sam are as different as two people can be. Sam impresses Pinky's parents with his polished appearance, helpful attitude and goals for the future. Pinky on the other hand is a rebel that is always taking on causes. Pinky and Samir go from having a strong dislike to possibly falling for each other. Pinky, her cousin, and Sam find a summer cause which seems to upset her mother even more. The book shows a lot of growth for both Pinky and Sam. This book made me laugh and cry. All three in this series have made me cry and that's saying a lot. But it's definitely a good cry. I highly recommend this series and wish there were more.

I love the way Sandhya Menon writes YA and after meeting Pinky and Samir in ‘There’s Something About Sweetie’ I was thrilled to get their story. I love a good opposites attract romance and when I saw it was a fake dating romance… SOLD.

Super cute fake dating story with a nice dash of opposites attract. I loved the Cape Cod setting for that end of summer vibe and the wholesomeness of trying to save a butterfly habitat from becoming condos.

This was a good quick read that felt very middle of the road for me. I didn't hate it - I actually liked it more than Sweetie and Ashish's book, but less than Dimple and Rishi. I really liked Samir but I found Pinky absolutely insufferable at times. She's so combative and harsh. Honestly quite toxic. I love a good fake dating trope and this one was pretty fun. Also kind of get a hate-to-love trope as well (another favorite trope). And I LOVED DK!! This is an easy beach read if/when you need one that can be read without reading the others in the series. I'll give warning that there is terminal illness of a parent discussed but that parent is in remission for the entirety of the book.

This was just too cute! I've been waiting for Pinky x Samir's story since I read Sweetie and fake dating is my FAVORITE trope so I was just super thrilled with this. Also, DQ is my favorite.

10 Things I Hate About You is a companion novel to There's Something About Sweetie and features two of Ashish's close friends: Pinky Kumar and Samir Jha. You don't have to read There's Something About Sweetie before picking this book up. There are quite a few romantic tropes used in the book such as hate to love and fake dating, which will delight romance readers.
Pinky is a rebel with a cause, who is proud, unafraid to voice her opinions and makes impulsive decisions much to her mother's frustration. An incident involving a fire at her family's vacation home makes Pinky a usual suspect, but she is falsely judged. Tensions escalate between her mom and gives Pinky a new cause to fight for: proving her mom that she is capable of making the right choices. She concocts a relationship with the perfect, parent approved boyfriend. She knows the right person, but will he agree to join the scheme?
Samir is Pinky's polar opposite. He is extremely organized, looks after and is close to his ailing mother. He is content to follow his plan on having an occupation in corporate law. When his dream summer internship falls through, Samir is left spinning until Pinky invites him to play her boyfriend for the duration of their coastal summer vacation.
While Pinky and Samir have great chemistry and banter, they each have a lot of personal baggage that were not fleshed out and hindered their character development. Pinky has a strenuous relationship with her mother, which was only explored at a surface level. There is a pivotal moment in which we learn bits of Pinky's mom backstory that highlights how mother and daughter share more similarities than differences, which I wished was explored much more. Samir has issues of anxiety and control which were spurned on by his mother's diagnosis of cancer when Samir was very young. Mental health continues to be a taboo topic in the South Asian community and this would have been the perfect time to address it in the book, but unfortunately it is glossed over. Instead of addressing these hard issues, the book spends more time in Pinky's and Samir's activism in trying to fight and conserve a butterfly habitat. Although it was nice to see teen activists, it didn't interest me much.
Overall I enjoyed 10 Things I Hate About Pinky, but I don't think it is the strongest book in the When Dimple met Rishi universe. The pacing felt uneven and I wanted more introspection from the characters. Readers who are looking for a breezy romance read may feel different.

This was cute. It is not my favorite of Sandhya Menon's books. The summer setting in Cape Cod and the fake dating/enemies-to-lovers tropes just didn't work as well for me as I thought it should. I liked Pinky as a character and I thought Samir had potential, but I kept expecting more from this story than I got.

[I kept expecting for it to come out that Samir hadn't told his mother where he was all summer and that was some how going to get him labeled as immature and irresponsible, but that never happened]

10 Things I Hate About Pinky is a great addition to Sandhya Menon's "Dimple" universe. Fans of the series will love getting a deeper look at Pinky and her relationship with her family and what makes her tick.

Another hit by Menon!!! She never disappoints! I think this one is sure to please fans! I like how she takes a character we have seen in the background before and really zooms in on them.

My review of the audiobook for Booklist is here: https://www.booklistonline.com/10-Things-I-Hate-about-Pinky-/pid=9739700

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/10-things-i-hate-about-pinky-by-sandhya-menon-in-booklist/

Pinky is a spunky and fun character to follow, and Sandhya Menon does it again, with this sweet story that shows what healthy relationships can look like, with the added bonus of a fake-dating plot line.

I have loved every one of Menon's Dimpleverse books, and this was no exception. Pinky is a larger-than-life character, but it made the book all the more fun. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Menon's other books (but read the others first!).

Sandhya Menon has yet to disappoint me! Since reading the first book in the Dimple-verse, I have been hooked. The best way to describe her books would be to compare them to a relaxing summer day spent sitting poolside and sipping lemonade.

The characters in this book do not disappoint, especially Pinky! While readers would already know Pinky Kumar from There's Something About Sweetie, getting to see her character more was such a treat. I love how passionate and stubborn she is! The representation that she gives to all girls who want to fight and be part of something bigger than themselves is so important. This all led to some pretty heartfelt moments, which really made the mother-daughter relationship presented in the book feel much more real. In that same vein, I am so glad that Menon was able to represent Pinky's mom the way she did. Without spoiling anything, she also felt just as real and human as Pinky.

I would highly recommend this book (and the rest in the series), especially to kick off 2021 on a much lighter note than 2020!

I adored this book. Was a perfect story to add to the series. Both characters were likable, fun and I enjoy reading about a different culture

I am so sad to report that I did not really enjoy this book. I loved the others in the series but the drama in this one was waaaaaaaaaaay too much. Yes I know it's YA. Yes I know they sometimes come with lots of drama. But this was TOO MUCH. I thought Pinky was a brat and did not deserve Samir. No real character growth and hard to connect with any of the characters. The only thing that saved this from a one star is the characters we meet in Cape Cod who help Pinky with her latest project.

Disappointing end to an otherwise fun trilogy.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Another hit by Sandhya Menon, 10 Things I Hate About Pinky delivers a great rivals-to-lovers, fake dating romance made all the more memorable by the family and individual healing that comes as a result of an originally deceptive scheme. Pinky Kumar and Samir Jha couldn't be any more different, which is exactly why Pinky asks him for his help in convincing her parents that they're dating in an effort to get some peace between her and her mother. Throughout the course of the book, Samir and Pinky seem to adopt some of the traits they find the most irritating about the other, as Pinky grows a little more level-headed and introspective and Samir learns that it's okay to take a risk sometimes. As they slowly peel back each other's facades and get vulnerable with each other, Pinky and Samir begin to wonder what's real and what's fake, and the resulting tension and yearning is absolutely swoonworthy. Highly recommend.

When Pinky creates an imaginary respectable boyfriend to impress her parents, she recruits Samir, whose law internship has fallen through, to be him for the summer. He needs something to do and vacationing sounds pretty good. Pinky and her mother fight constantly, and Pinky I convince her mother hates her. Samir sees things differently even while he himself doesn’t understand Pinky at all. But as Pinky and Samir spend time together, they go from fringe acquaintances to actual friends who can appreciate their differences. Could this pretend relationship become real?
This is the third book in the Dimpleverse and it lived up to the high expectations the previous two gave me. I didn’t think I’d like Pinky or Samir, but these prickly people smoothed each others rough edges and won me over.