There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon | Book Review

There's Something About Sweetie
by Sandhya Menon
Series: Dimple and Rishi #2
Published on May 14, 2019 by Simon Pulse
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult

Ashish Patel didn’t know love could be so…sucky. After he’s dumped by his ex-girlfriend, his mojo goes AWOL. Even worse, his parents are annoyingly, smugly confident they could find him a better match. So, in a moment of weakness, Ash challenges them to set him up.

The Patels insist that Ashish date an Indian-American girl—under contract. Per subclause 1(a), he’ll be taking his date on “fun” excursions like visiting the Hindu temple and his eccentric Gita Auntie. Kill him now. How is this ever going to work?

Sweetie Nair is many things: a formidable track athlete who can outrun most people in California, a loyal friend, a shower-singing champion. Oh, and she’s also fat. To Sweetie’s traditional parents, this last detail is the kiss of death.

Sweetie loves her parents, but she’s so tired of being told she’s lacking because she’s fat. She decides it’s time to kick off the Sassy Sweetie Project, where she’ll show the world (and herself) what she’s really made of.

Ashish and Sweetie both have something to prove. But with each date they realize there’s an unexpected magic growing between them. Can they find their true selves without losing each other?

I want to start this review by emphasizing that There’s Something About Sweetie really hits the mark when it comes to how important this diverse story is. As an #ownvoices book, it truly shines. Sweetie is a phenomenal lead, easily my favorite part of the story was anytime she was on the page. Her journey and motivations, which I don’t want to go into too much detail about so as not to spoil anything, were a delight to read, and the ending was absolutely beautiful. It’s just that everything else about this book fell a bit flat for me.

First off, Ashish wasn’t my favorite. He had his moments, but I much preferred reading Sweetie’s POVs and found myself struggling to get through his. His interactions, the conversations he had with his friends, they all just felt forced for me. I really only enjoyed his character when he was opposite Sweetie(shocking, I know). So it was tough for me to fall in love with a book where I only really enjoyed one of the two POVS. The side characters also felt very one deminsional, with conflicts that seemingly came out of nowhere. The whole thing with Ashish’s ex bored me to death, because I felt like I’ve read that same story a hundred times and knew how it would play out. The only character whose story I found myself very intrigued by, besides Sweetie, was her mother. I absolutely loved reading their interactions, seeing Sweetie deal with her mother’s constant comments about her weight. At times it truly hurt to read, and during their last scenes together I found myself tearing up.

As far as the pace for this book goes, it was a pretty quick read for me. I did find myself putting it aside occasionally to play on my phone, but when I gave it my full attention I flew through it. Menon’s writing style contributed to that, her prose easy to read but heartfelt. I could really see her love for Sweetie’s character in the way she wrote her, and it made reading her story that much more enjoyable. I didn’t always love the dialogue, as I mentioned earlier, but the in between bits are really where the heart of this book showed itself.

Overall, There’s Something About Sweetie landed smack dab in the middle for me. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t dislike it. It’s definitely an important story, and I will highly recommend it in that regard, because we need more books about fat girls, about Indian girls and Indian boys on our shelves. And those parts of the story were the best parts of the story for me.

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About Katie

I'm a twenty-something aspiring writer who really, really needs to get back to revisions. I've been reviewing books since 2014, and am determined to somehow make stories my day job. I truly think that every book out there contains something good and is meant for somebody.