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romancelibrary 's review for:
Dating Dr. Dil
by Nisha Sharma
I received an ARC from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
Dating Dr. Dil was one of my highly anticipated reads of the year. I expected a fun Desi romantic comedy with flawed characters to root for. I'm not sure what the author was aiming for, but the storytelling is chaotic, the dialogues are cringy, and every single character is awful and has little to no development.
Dating Dr. Dil is an enemies to lovers romance, with a dash of fake dating. It's also loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. First of all, the connection between Prem and Kareena? Insta-lust. They're also both incredibly annoying. Kareena, in particular, crossed a line with her behaviour, which she never apologized for. The enemies aspect of the romance did not work well - Prem and Kareena came across as juvenile and asinine. Their childish behaviour was supposed to be comedic, but it only succeeded in annoying the hell out of me. In terms of characterization, Prem's passion and motivation to build a community clinic is easy to understand. But there's nothing to show the motivation behind Kareena's professional choices.
The romance slightly improved when Prem and Kareena got over their childish behaviour and went on fun dates together. Kareena believes in love. Prem doesn't believe in love. Kareena wants him to say the words. Prem doesn't want to say the words. It's the most annoying type of conflict. That being said, I liked the conversation between Prem and his mom. Most Asian families value actions over words. They don't go around saying "I love you" to each other. Instead, they show their love through actions and sacrifices. The author didn't specifically highlight this as a cultural thing, but I still appreciated the fact that Prem had a conversation with his mom about saying the words "I love you."
With a few exceptions, the dialogues are awkward, cringy, and stilted. Some of the Aunty dialogues made me think, "A desi aunty would never have used these words." It's almost as if the author was stuck between appealing to her Desi audience and her non-Desi audience.
The author tried hard to make it look like she was demolishing stereotypes, but in my opinion, she just ended up reinforcing these stereotypes. Why does every Desi romance have to be about arranged marriage vs. love marriage? Our culture is not limited to rishtas. Why do Desi authors amplify this aspect of our culture, to the point where it feels like a caricature and mockery? There was some commentary about how Desi women are negatively impacted by cultural expectations about marriage, but it didn't have a strong impact on me.
Dating Dr. Dil was one of my highly anticipated reads of the year. I expected a fun Desi romantic comedy with flawed characters to root for. I'm not sure what the author was aiming for, but the storytelling is chaotic, the dialogues are cringy, and every single character is awful and has little to no development.
Dating Dr. Dil is an enemies to lovers romance, with a dash of fake dating. It's also loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. First of all, the connection between Prem and Kareena? Insta-lust. They're also both incredibly annoying. Kareena, in particular, crossed a line with her behaviour, which she never apologized for. The enemies aspect of the romance did not work well - Prem and Kareena came across as juvenile and asinine. Their childish behaviour was supposed to be comedic, but it only succeeded in annoying the hell out of me. In terms of characterization, Prem's passion and motivation to build a community clinic is easy to understand. But there's nothing to show the motivation behind Kareena's professional choices.
The romance slightly improved when Prem and Kareena got over their childish behaviour and went on fun dates together. Kareena believes in love. Prem doesn't believe in love. Kareena wants him to say the words. Prem doesn't want to say the words. It's the most annoying type of conflict. That being said, I liked the conversation between Prem and his mom. Most Asian families value actions over words. They don't go around saying "I love you" to each other. Instead, they show their love through actions and sacrifices. The author didn't specifically highlight this as a cultural thing, but I still appreciated the fact that Prem had a conversation with his mom about saying the words "I love you."
With a few exceptions, the dialogues are awkward, cringy, and stilted. Some of the Aunty dialogues made me think, "A desi aunty would never have used these words." It's almost as if the author was stuck between appealing to her Desi audience and her non-Desi audience.
The author tried hard to make it look like she was demolishing stereotypes, but in my opinion, she just ended up reinforcing these stereotypes. Why does every Desi romance have to be about arranged marriage vs. love marriage? Our culture is not limited to rishtas. Why do Desi authors amplify this aspect of our culture, to the point where it feels like a caricature and mockery? There was some commentary about how Desi women are negatively impacted by cultural expectations about marriage, but it didn't have a strong impact on me.