How is this the 9th monthly Calendar Girls?! And how is it already September?! It feels just like yesterday that Melanie and I were putting our heads together trying to figure out what we wanted our blog event to be. Before we know it, our baby will be turning 1 year old! *sniffle* Well, maybe not quite yet. But anyway! This month it’s all about that contemporary fiction, and I cannot wait to see what all of you will have picked / will pick!

Also, there will be no Calendar Girls themed readalong this month, because Melanie and I are both too busy (me partially because I had already planned to do another readalong this month for A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. If you’d like to join that, please sign up using the Google Form provided here, and also for the newsletter if you want reminders!)

For those of you new to Calendar Girls, it’s a blog event which I am co-hosting with my friend Melanie, and is inspired by Neil Sedaka’s 1961 song Calendar Girl. Just like in the song, we decided to use a specific theme for each month and choose a book based on these themes! The event is meant to incite discussions with other bloggers about books we’ve read and loved, is meant to help bloggers meet other bloggers, and also for bloggers and readers to find out about blogs and books which they normally may not have come across!

If this sounds like your cup of tea, please check out my info page for more details, and sign up for the newsletter, and/or let us know that you will be participating if you are still interested after reading everything. You can also find examples of what my posts looked like from January to August! We’d love to have you join in the fun!

And now…without further ado, here is my choice for September’s theme…

– Best Contemporary Novel-

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Synopsis: Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?

Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.

The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?

Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.

This was such a tough choice! I thought that since I don’t read a lot of contemporary, that this would be an easy choice. But no. Since I’ve read just a few contemp novels (especially this year), it actually made things difficult, because the majority of them were really really good! After some consideration, though, I ended up going with When Dimple Met Rishi! It was a very close tie with Geekerella, but since I had picked that one for Best Fairytale Retelling already, When Dimple Met Rishi won!

Sandhya Menon’s book was a very fun read, and I was happy to learn a little more about Indian culture (not sure what the right term here is), as well as how culture can develop and adjust when one immigrates to another country. This has always interested me, probably because I’ve been an immigrant twice in my life already, and saw these changes take place with my own culture. I thought it was really cool to read about Dimple and Rishi, two Indian teens who are children of immigrant parents, and how they each handle expectations from their parents, as well as expectations from the society which they were born into, in their own way. If you want to read more of my rambles about this book, you can check out my review here!

For those who are curious, the other contemp novels that I’ve read this year in particualr, and almost picked for this theme as well:

Geekerella by Ashely Poston

Rebels Like Us by Liz Reinhardt

I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo

Other Participants:

Melanie – Lost Girls by Merrie Destefano

Katie @ Never Not Reading – Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Coffeeloving Bookaholic – A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Lauren @ Two Birds One Blog – Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson

Darque @ Darque Dreamer Reads – The Future She Left Behind by Marin Thomas

Deanna @ Deanna Writs About… – A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Beware of the Reader – Making Faces by Amy Harmon

Book Princess Review – Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Thai @ Read Breathe Repeat – Pretty Face by Lucy Parker

Little Blind Book Finds – The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

And now for the October theme which
you picked through the use of the poll!

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BEST PARANORMAL NOVEL!!!

I was going to use a paranormal book themed GIF, but then I saw this one of V from BTS, and just had to use it! I love you V! Also, is anyone as excited or Halloween as I am?! I love Halloween. It’s one of my favourite things!

THANK YOU FOR READING MY CALENDAR GIRLS POST! HAVE YOU EVER READ ANY OF THE BOOKS OTHER PARTICIPANTS AND MYSELF HAVE MENTIONED? IF SO, WHAT DID YOU THINK? AND IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THEM YET, DO YOU WANT TO, OR NOT? HOWCOME? FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, WHETHER YOU’RE A CALENDAR GIRL OR NOT! ALSO, WE WOULD LIKE TO SAY THAT ALTHOUGH THE EVENT HAS THE WORD “GIRLS” IN THE TITLE, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ALL GENDERS, SEXUALITIES, ETC. ARE NOT WELCOME! ALL ARE WELCOME! I LOOK FORWARD TO READING ALL OF YOUR COMMENTS!