I read There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon earlier this year and loved it. When I saw the title for this book, I could totally tell that Samir was going to end up with Pinky, so I was surprised to see this book turn into a kind of enemies-to-lovers book.
Samir and Pinky are not exactly enemies, but they do get on each other’s nerves a lot. Samir especially gets on Pinky’s nerves, which was true in the prequel, but given how Samir kept looking at Pinky throughout the prequel, I just assumed he secretly had the hots for her and was just too shy to say anything.
Turns out, that wasn’t exactly the case, or at least, if that was the case initially, Menon decided to adjust it for this book, which starts shortly after the previous book ends. It’s summer break and Pinky is going on vacation with her super-rich parents to a cabin they co-own with Pinky’s maternal aunt and her husband and daughter, who is about Pinky’s age and also very good friends with Pinky, despite the fact that Pinky feels threatened by her cousin’s apparent perfection.
When the barn on their property goes up in flames and Pinky’s mom immediately assumes it was Pinky, and then doesn’t even apologize to Pinky when they find out who was really responsible, Pinky decides to prove something (not sure what, exactly) by dating the kind of guy her mom has always wanted her to date. Someone she would never even consider dating. Someone like Samir.
Samir is in Washington D.C. for an internship at a prestigious law firm, but through no fault of his own, the internship fell through at the very last minute. He can’t bear the idea of telling his mom right away, so he hangs out until he gets a text message from Pinky asking him to be her fake boyfriend for the summer. Her parents are both prestigious lawyers (her mom is known as “The Shark”) so Pinky is pretty sure she can get Samir an internship at her law firm once their fake summer fling is over.
Samir agrees because of the internship, but of course they drive each other crazy. Pinky is passionate and impulsive and loves to live in the moment. Samir has a planner in which he plans out every part of every day because he’s afraid things will fall apart if he doesn’t. But he’s also smart and kind, and while he sees how self-destructive Pinky can be, he also sees how loving and passionate she is, so of course they end up falling in love for real.
The book gets its title from the fact that Samir loves to make lists, and early on in the book, when Pinky is driving him crazy, he makes a list of the 10 things he hates about her.
Even after they’ve each admitted they have feelings for the other, they have a hard time admitting that dating for real is a good idea, and once they both finally decide it is a good idea, of course that’s when Pinky finds the list Samir made weeks ago and then forgot about. But this is a romance, so you know they manage to work through it.