No one will be able to read this book without feeling like they’ve read it before. The story is as old as the hills. I’ll admit I did judge the book by its cover--I checked it out from the library because I thought the cover looked pretty cool. Since the writer actually was born and raised in America, I at least expected it to be a little more realistic and a little less one-sided than American Desi. Unfortunately it turned out to be just another ABCD story, complete with all the old sterotypes and lacking any emotional complexity. The main character, Dimple Lala, is an ABCD who...you know the story. Then her parents try to set her up with some FOB guy Karsh who actually turns out to be pretty cool in the end (yawn). As far as side characters go the book is populated with cardboard cutouts--her parents, best friend Gwyn, etc. There is the obligatory South Asian homosexual-in-the-closet, Kavita (an issue already rehashed in Bend it like Beckham and in several books by South Asian American Muslim gay people). It’s hard not to feel contempt for this book when you read lines like this: ’’My favorite dessert is kheer, maybe because of it’s American-ness--white rice pudding’’. Give me a break. I don’t know any ABCD who talks like that. And hardly anyone in America eats rice pudding anyway. Oh, and this one: ’’maybe you can be both Indian and American at the same time...I will not only sit by (Dimple’s Sikh classmate) but share samosas with him too’’ Well it’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have picked up anything about NRI’s anyway. With the exception of East is East (which I wrote about last time), I’m always disappointed. like always comments are welcome