Teen Tuesday: Ten Things I Hate about Pinky by Sandhya Menon

Image: Simon & Schuster

Ten Things I Hate about Pinky by Sandhya Menon. Unabridged e-audiobook. ~11 hours, 7 minutes. Read by Vikas Adam and Soneela Nankani. Simon & Schuster Audio, July, 2020. 9781797108759. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library. Hardcover book purchased.)

Teen Tuesday features Ten Things I Hate about Pinky by Sandhya Menon. Ms. Menon is becoming queen of YA rom-coms with her fourth book. This dual-narrative from the points of view of Pinky Kumar, social justice warrior with a penchant for neon dye and bad boyfriends, and Samir Jha, a buttoned-up and Harvard-bound meticulous planner.

Pinky's spending the summer in her beloved Cape Cod with her extended family. While she loves her cousin to pieces, Pinky's getting tired of constantly being compared the her cousin with her perfect grades and perfect behavior. When not-so-Miss-Perfect sneaks out to be with a boy and the family barn burns to the ground thanks to an errant candle, Pinky gets blamed for the fire. Pinky, stuck between ratting out her cousin or taking the fall, invents a fake boyfriend - one her buttoned-up corporate lawyer mother would approve of. Now, the problem is, just how will Pinky make him materialize? Then she thinks of Samir.

Samir's in Washington D.C. panicked when his dream summer internship with a law firm falls through. His mom really didn't want him to go and he really doesn't want to return home to spend the summer under her over-protective gaze. He's surprised to receive a text from Pinky and even more surprised to learn of her plan for him to spend the summer in Cape Cod pretending to be her boyfriend. He's no fan of Pinky's. In fact, she and her impulsive ways drive him crazy but he doesn't want to return home. What could go wrong?

This breezy, fluffy fun was ably narrated by the two narrators. I did wonder why both narrators were chosen yet again to narrate this one. All these books take place in the Dimple and Rishi universe and they narrated the other books. They are all standalone books narrated in the first-person and neither narrator varied their voices. Both are fine narrators but I felt that the same character narrated all the books.

If you like YA romance, Ten Things I Hate about Pinky or any other book by Sandhya Menon is just what you need.