Wednesday 30 January 2013

Song Of the Cuckoo Bird, Amullya Malladi



 
 
Synopsis
 


A sweeping epic set in southern India, where a group of outcasts create a family while holding tight to their dreams.

Barely a month after she is promised in marriage, eleven-year-old orphan Kokila comes to Tella Meda, an ashram by the Bay of Bengal. Once there, she makes a courageous yet foolish choice that alters the fabric of her life: Instead of becoming a wife and mother, youthful passion drives Kokila to remain at the ashram.

Through the years, Kokila revisits her decision as she struggles to make her mark in a country where untethered souls like hers merely slip through the cracks. But standing by her conviction, she makes a home in Tella Meda alongside other strong yet deeply flawed women. Sometimes they are her friends, sometimes they are her enemies, but always they are her family.

Like Isabel Allende, Amulya Malladi crafts complex characters in deeply atmospheric settings that transport readers through different eras, locales, and sensibilities. Careening from the 1940s to the present day, Song of the Cuckoo Bird chronicles India’s tumultuous history as generations of a makeshift family seek comfort and joy in unlikely places–and from unlikely hearts.(less)
Paperback, 400 pages
Published December 27th 2005 by Ballantine Books
ISBN
0345483154 (ISBN13: 9780345483157)
edition language
English
original title
Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel
 
 
 
My Review
 
What would you call a woman who gives up on a happy household life and chooses instead to live in an ashram, a life far away from that of a traditional Indian woman would have ever imagined? Kokila did just that. She happens to visit Tella Meda. A marriage is supposed to happen within a month. But the girl, rather an eleven year old orphan makes her choice of staying back. Staying back meant choosing a treacherous life and being deprived of the happiness of building up a family. staying back also meant choosing her own life which she wanted to live. She chose to see the later and ‘Song Of The Cuckoo Bird’ is her tale of fight for survival.
Amulya Malladi is a genius and Song of the Cuckoo Bird is a masterpiece. Like others from the same plot, it is not a feminist rant. It is a fictitious account on the fate of a lady who driven by her youthful desires pursuing a life she wanted to live. The story is set in the early nineteenth century I suppose and that was the period when racial discrimination was at its peak. Plus it was southern India where the story is set in. The customs and rituals were something they religiously followed. The people had a very stereotypic way of thinking. Kokila, living in such a society and defying their conventional ways of life is in a way very feministic in approach. Even when you look at it just as a human being on the whole, it’s difficult. And that is where the book bags in most of the attention. Once when you get started on the book, then a curiosity within you develops to know further. Before you know, Bam! The book is over.
This book is inspiring. You want to know more about what happened to Kokila because of the depth of her character. She with the clarity of her mind charms you. She is determined from the point she makes her choice and vows to stand by it come what may. As the excerpt says, she finds friends, enemies and a family within the deeply flawed women. The book is movingly real and it is solely the characters that make it my favorite.
 
Posted by at 22:52 0 comments

A Free Man, Aman Sethi

 
Synopsis

In this landmark work of reportage, Aman Sethi sets out to understand the life of Mohammad Ashraf, a daily-wage worker in Delhi’s Bara Tooti Chowk. Spending the greater part of five years in ‘the largely empty space between the backpacker haven of Paharganj and picturesque Chandni Chowk’, where daily-wage transactions take place, he learns, over alcohol, tea and ganja, the story of Ashraf’s life. Bringing labour into the narrative of the city, Sethi chronicles the minutiae that make up the lives of the labourers who are building Delhi: from the boiled eggs, sweet tea, varieties of raw alcohol that can quickly nullify a day’s earnings, secret pockets stitched into clothes, and unconventional banking arrangements to the vulnerability of the labourers to the kidney mafia and their survival in a network of systems that should serve but mostly alienates. The vignettes come in asides to the running conversations with Ashraf, throwing light on the lives of countless invisible men. A Free Man gives us the lens to view a contemporary transformation. Deeply insightful and compulsively readable, it is a humane, intimate and compelling account of an individual and a group of people who are most often explained away in a statistic.

My Review



I’ve always been told a very famous Hindi proverb as a kid when I didn't want to study.

‘Padhoge Likhoge banoge nawab, kheloge koodoge banoge kharab’

This is one novel that very well defies the proverb. Md. Ashraf studied biology, became a butcher, a tailor, and an electrician's apprentice. He is now a homeless day laborer and has managed to survive the brutalities of the capital with a small piece of land in Old Delhi. The story revolves around this man and his concepts of freedom and humanity.

Delhi has always come across as a very brutal city. There is hardly any room for kindness. Its all about people running for that one thing from where their lives is no less than that of a king but what they end up with what is just enough for them to survive. Some even fail to do that. One of them is definitely Ashraf. There were hardly any expectations that I had. By the time I finished up on the first chapter, I was moved yet disappointed. Moved, needless to say because the world seemed like a dark tunnel with no light guiding me. Disappointed, because the language didn’t live up to the levels of the concept. Gradually, I reached a point of saturation. At that point, one could not decipher between the narrator and the character. They seemed to be one. The wall between the researcher and his findings broke down and it gave you an illusion that as a work of literature pleases you, but as a human makes you feel ashamed of yourself. The book is an eye-opener. It makes you see things which everyone of us has knowingly ignored. A recommended book? Yes. Definitely!

 
Posted by at 22:29 0 comments

Friday 18 January 2013

Book Review- Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese



Paperback, 541 pages
Published December 1st 2009 by Vintage Books USA (first published February 3rd 2009)
 
 
 
Synopsis-
 
A stunning debut novel from the author of My Own Country: an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, fathers and sons, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin scions of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a shared fascination with medicine, the brothers come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will not be politics, but love—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding work as an intern at an underfunded Bronx hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

Cutting for Stone—intensely suspenseful, deeply moving, and unexpectedly funny—is both an unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
 
 
My review-
 
"I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain."
— Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone)
Marion and Shiva are twins born off a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon. The mother dies at childbirth and the father flees away. They are then brought in a medical missionary hospital. When they grow up they begin to know their past and that goes on to define love, destiny and family for them. Cutting for Stone is a shockingly realistic story set in the Addis Ababa.
When I started reading the book, I was expecting nothing. The title however intrigued me. I didn’t know what it meant. But I went on to read it and I now know what is it. The plot is very detailed. The detailing however goes on to consume a lot of pages. It makes you take time to really get into the flow. It took me really 400 pages or so to make me really interested in the story.
Every medical procedure is described with utter precision. The detailing sometimes can make many hearts skip quite a few beats, a clear enough proof that the author has a medical background. I was okay with them but some might consider skipping through those. That however is not a big deal for me because
a. I’m not squeamish. I can deal with violent stuff.
b. I’ve gotten used to these things; blood, muscles, cuts, surgeries because I, myself am associated with these things.
 
The thoughts flow very poetically into the story. And the writing had me from the very first chapter itself. For those looking out for really kickass writing, let me tell you, this is the book. It has really flawless writing. Not even a single adjective is misplaced. He had everything clear in his mind before he penned it down it seems. He had completely imagined the whole piece in his head. And that is what makes this piece of fiction come alive. This is the most original, piece of writing that I’d have ever read or I’ll probably ever read in quite a long time. I’ll need a lot of light-hearted reading to counteract the effect of this book.
 
About the Author-
 
Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, he grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, he completed his training at Madras Medical College and went to the United States for his residency as one of many foreign medical graduates. Like many others, he found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him, an experience he described in one of his early New Yorker articles, The Cowpath to America.

From Johnson City, Tennessee, where he was a resident from 1980 to 1983, he did his fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, working at Boston City Hospital for two years. It was here that he first saw the early signs of the HIV epidemic and later, when he returned to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he saw the second epidemic, rural AIDS, and his life took the turn for which he is most well known ? his caring for numerous AIDS patients in an era when little could be done and helping them through their early and painful deaths was often the most a physician could do.

His work with terminal patients and the insights he gained from the deep relationships he formed and the suffering he saw were intensely transformative; they became the basis for his first book, My Own Country : A Doctor's Story, written later during his years in El Paso, Texas. Such was his interest in writing that he decided to take some time away from medicine to study at the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Since then, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Forbes.com, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Following Iowa, he became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived for the next 11 years. In addition to writing his first book, which was one of five chosen as Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and later made into a Mira Nair movie, he also wrote a second best-selling book, The Tennis Partner : A Story of Friendship and Loss, about his friend and tennis partner?s struggle with addiction. This was a New York Times' Notable Book.
Posted by at 02:04 0 comments

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Book Review- Swimsuit, James Patterson


 
 
Paperback, 479 pages
Published 2010 by Arrow Books (first published June 29th 2009)
ISBN
0099514621 (ISBN13: 9780099514626)
edition language
English
original title
Swimsuit
 
Synopsis
 
Kim, a breathtakingly beautiful supermodel on a photo shoot in Hawaii, disappears. Fearing the worst, her parents travel to Hawaii to investigate for themselves, never expecting the horror that awaits them.

LA Times reporter Ben Hawkins is conducting his own research into the case, hoping to help the victim and get an idea for his next bestseller. With no leads and no closer to uncovering the kidnapper's identity than when he stepped off the plane, Ben gets a shocking visit that pushes him into an impossible-to-resist deal with the devil.

A heart-pounding story of fear and desire, SWIMSUIT transports readers to a chilling new territory where the collision of beauty and murder transforms paradise into a hell of unspeakable horrors.
 
My Review-
 
Kim McDaniels is a supermodel who is in Hawaii for a swimsuit photoshoot. She goes missing during the photoshoot in the most glamorous hotel of the city. Within hours the most efficient forces are put to work. Ben is one such crime reporter and part time novelist who is made to fly to the city from LA. Ben sees a very good crime novel out of this real life mysterious mishap but the problem arises when he finds himself a little too much into the incident than he had bargained for. The novel starts off with a few violent sex-scenes. The violence then transports itself to a whole new level with the introduction of the pschpathic killer. The pace was again brutal and makes a brilliant page-turner. I was done within 2 hours and that comes as no shock once you, yourself begin on it. I guess this pace is what makes James Patterson a favorite for so many. A gruesome, engrossing read but does not land up to my expections with the creativity or the plot as you might say.
 
About The Author-
 
The subject of a Time magazine feature called, "The Man Who Can't Miss," James Patterson is the bestselling author of the past year, bar none, with more than 16 million books sold in North America alone. In 2007, one of every fifteen hardcover fiction books sold was a Patterson title. In the past three years, James has sold more books than any other author (according to Bookscan), and in total, James's books have sold an estimated 220 million copies worldwide. He is the first author to have #1 new titles simultaneously on The New York Times adult and children's lists and is the only author to have five new hardcover novels debut at #1 on the list in one year—a record-breaking feat he's accomplished every year since 2005. To date, James Patterson has had nineteen consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds the New York Times record for most Hardcover Fiction bestselling titles by a single author (63 total), which is also a Guinness World Record.



From his James Patterson Pageturner Awards (which rewarded groups and individuals for creative and effective ways to spread the joy of reading) to his website ReadKiddoRead.com (which helps adults find books that kids are sure to love) to his regular donations of thousands of books to troops overseas, Patterson is a lifelong champion of books and reading. His first foray into books for all ages was the critically acclaimed Maximum Ride series, which debuted on the New York Times bestsellers list at #1 and remained there for twelve straight weeks. The series has so far made appearances on The New York Times bestsellers lists ninety-four cumulative times, proving that kids of all ages love page turners. He captured the attention of boy readers with the Daniel X series, and his third series for readers of all ages debuted in December 2009 with Witch & Wizard, which spent five consecutive weeks atop the New York Times bestsellers list.



Patterson is the creator of the #1 new detective series of the past dozen years, featuring Alex Cross and including the Hollywood-adapted "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls," starring Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman. He is also the creator of the #1 new detective series of the past five years, featuring Lindsay Boxer and the other members of the Women's Murder Club, from which the ABC television drama series was adapted. He has authored books behind six films on the Hollywood fast-track, including the upcoming Maximum Ride movie forthcoming from Avi Arad, the producer of X-Men and Spiderman.



He is the author of novels—from The Thomas Berryman Number (1976) to Honeymoon (2005)—that have won awards including the Edgar, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Reader's Digest Reader's Choice Award. And, he has won a Children's Choice Book Council's Children's Choice Awards "Author of the Year" award (2010).



One of Forbes magazine's Celebrity 100, James made a guest appearance on the popular FOX TV show "The Simpsons" in March, 2007.
 
 
Posted by at 02:43 0 comments

Book Review- 8th Confession, James Patterson

Published (first published 2009)
ISBN
1846052580 (ISBN13: 9781846052583)
original title
8th Confession (Women's Murder Club, #8)
series
Women's Murder Club #8
characters
Lindsay Boxer
literary awards
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Mystery/Thriller (2009)
 
 
 
Synopsis-
 
 
As San Francisco's most glamorous millionaires mingle at the party of the year, someone is watching--waiting for a chance to take vengeance on Isa and Ethan Bailey, the city's most celebrated couple. Finally, the killer pinpoints the ideal moment, and it's the perfect murder. Not a trace of evidence is left behind in their glamorous home.

As Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates the high-profile murder, someone else is found brutally executed--a preacher with a message of hope for the homeless. His death nearly falls through the cracks, but when reporter Cindy Thomas hears about it, she knows the story could be huge. Probing deeper into the victim's history, she discovers he may not have been quite as saintly as everyone thought.

As the hunt for two criminals tests the limits of the Women's Murder Club, Lindsay sees sparks fly between Cindy and her partner, Detective Rich Conklin. The Women's Murder Club now faces its toughest challenge: will love destroy all that four friends have built? The exhilarating new chapter in the Women's Murder Club series, The 8th Confession serves up a double dose of speed-charged twists and shocking revelations as only James Patterson can.
 
 
 
My Review-
 
 
The Women’s Murder Club is in San Francisco to find out about the rich, glamorous millionaire couple which gets murdered at the city’s most happening party. The second thread is the murder of a saintly homeless man. Cindy, a journalist finds something very fishy about it and decides to make her own investigations. The women murder club on the other hand seems to be split. Lindsay seems to be at work. Yuki is juggling her life between who she supposes to be her man of dreams and her job as a detective. Both Yuki and Claire are barely mentioned. For a first time reader it seems as if she is not a pivotal character.Cindy somehow comes across as creepy. The pace is brisk and the book is a comp. lete pageturner thanks to what I suppose is The James Patterson style. Before you know you’re done with more than half the book. What pleased me the most about the book are the first few pages. The horrific detailing makes your mind form a kind of movie trailor in your head. The language is again very to the point. However the plot kind of doesnt please me too much. I expected a lot more. And since it is about a group of detectives, all of them don’t feature together. An average read to be very honest.
 
About The Author-
 

The subject of a Time magazine feature called, "The Man Who Can't Miss," James Patterson is the bestselling author of the past year, bar none, with more than 16 million books sold in North America alone. In 2007, one of every fifteen hardcover fiction books sold was a Patterson title. In the past three years, James has sold more books than any other author (according to Bookscan), and in total, James's books have sold an estimated 220 million copies worldwide. He is the first author to have #1 new titles simultaneously on The New York Times adult and children's lists and is the only author to have five new hardcover novels debut at #1 on the list in one year—a record-breaking feat he's accomplished every year since 2005. To date, James Patterson has had nineteen consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds the New York Times record for most Hardcover Fiction bestselling titles by a single author (63 total), which is also a Guinness World Record.



From his James Patterson Pageturner Awards (which rewarded groups and individuals for creative and effective ways to spread the joy of reading) to his website ReadKiddoRead.com (which helps adults find books that kids are sure to love) to his regular donations of thousands of books to troops overseas, Patterson is a lifelong champion of books and reading. His first foray into books for all ages was the critically acclaimed Maximum Ride series, which debuted on the New York Times bestsellers list at #1 and remained there for twelve straight weeks. The series has so far made appearances on The New York Times bestsellers lists ninety-four cumulative times, proving that kids of all ages love page turners. He captured the attention of boy readers with the Daniel X series, and his third series for readers of all ages debuted in December 2009 with Witch & Wizard, which spent five consecutive weeks atop the New York Times bestsellers list.



Patterson is the creator of the #1 new detective series of the past dozen years, featuring Alex Cross and including the Hollywood-adapted "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls," starring Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman. He is also the creator of the #1 new detective series of the past five years, featuring Lindsay Boxer and the other members of the Women's Murder Club, from which the ABC television drama series was adapted. He has authored books behind six films on the Hollywood fast-track, including the upcoming Maximum Ride movie forthcoming from Avi Arad, the producer of X-Men and Spiderman.



He is the author of novels—from The Thomas Berryman Number (1976) to Honeymoon (2005)—that have won awards including the Edgar, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Reader's Digest Reader's Choice Award. And, he has won a Children's Choice Book Council's Children's Choice Awards "Author of the Year" award (2010).



One of Forbes magazine's Celebrity 100, James made a guest appearance on the popular FOX TV show "The Simpsons" in March, 2007.
 

Posted by at 02:09 0 comments

Book Review- To Kill A Mocking Bird, Harper Lee

Paperback, 50th Anniversary Edition, 309 pages
Published June 24th 2010 by Arrow Books Ltd (first published 1960)
ISBN
0099549484 (ISBN13: 9780099549482)
edition language
English
original title
To Kill a Mockingbird
characters
Scout Finch, Atticus Finch, Jem Finch, Boo Radley
setting
Maycomb, Alabama, 1935 (United States)
Alabama (United States)
literary awards
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1961)
 
 
Synopsis- 
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story, an anti-racist novel, a historical drama of the Great Depression and a sublime example of the Southern writing tradition.
 
 
My Review
 
 
“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch”
―Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird.
 
It has never taken my heart too much of coaxing and cajoling to pick up a classic. When a book has been labelled as a classic, an American masterpiece, you are nearly assured of how things will turn out. There are expectations that touch the sky. With this book, I had too much of expectations but alas I’m spellbound to speak a word. The mere thought of penning down a review for a classic like this is intimidating. There are too many people, too many generations that has already read the book and have their own appreciations and own criticisms.
The plot need not be explained for a lot has been spoken and a lot has been written. There are sensitive issues that are discussed in a way that disturbs you and awakens your senses. It depresses you in every possible way. The destruction of innocence and the most realistic form of heroism have been portrayed with the most effective and apt use of literary devices. The language is fluid and smooth and makes you delve deep into the workings Atticus Finch’s mind. The society and their unjust views and actions make you think did ever humanity exist? Harper Lee’s truthfulness of a society that once existed makes it pretty much a must-read.
 
 
About The Author-
 
 
Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.

After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, "Ramma-Jamma". Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.

Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.

Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."

Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, the novel was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal
 
Posted by at 01:59 0 comments

Friday 4 January 2013

Book Review- The Husband She Never Knew

Synopsis-

What he wants, he takes!Cruelly discarded on her wedding night, Noelle Ducasse buries the shame of being an untouched bride—creating a new, glamorous life to mask the relentless ache of loneliness. Until Ammar returns…
 
The image of Noelle's guileless eyes lingers with Ammar still. Noelle can refuse him all she likes, but this time the ruthless Ammar will not be denied. He'll spend each moment of each night proving that—no matter how much her mind denies it—she will melt under her husband's exquisite touch.…
 
Paperback, 192 pages
Published October 16th 2012 by Harlequin (first published August 1st 2012)

ISBN
0373131062 (ISBN13: 9780373131068)
edition language
English
 
My Review-
 
Noelle says she has moved on after her much wanted marriage with Ammar was annulled. Ten years was ample time to give her life a fresh start. She now works for Arche, a department store. Life seemed to be back on track until Ammar visited her one night to tell her that he wanted to be married to her. There has been both love and secrets that have been hidden away from her. She was made to believe in the wrong things. Apparently the plane crash has changed him completely. After being heartbroken once, Noelle now refuses to deal with the same again. After Ammar abducts Noelle to his villa in Sahara that the story begins to unfold.
 
Pro’s-
  • Fluid narration.
  • Wonderful art of storytelling.
  • Perfect combination of suspense, romance, innocence and erotica.
Con’s
  • A few errors here and there.
  • The cover of the book being too plain.
  • The paper quality of the book.
 
 
 
About the Author-
 
  

Kate is the USA Today-bsetselling author of 25 romances with Harlequin Presents, hundreds of short stories, and several historical novels and anthologies now available on Kindle.
 
She likes to read romance, mystery, the occasional straight historical and angsty women's fiction; she particularly enjoys reading about well-drawn characters and avoids high-concept plots.
 
Having lived in New York City, she now makes her home in a tiny village on the windswept northwest coast of England, with her husband, four children, and an overly affectionate Golden Retriever.   

Posted by at 02:09 0 comments

Thursday 3 January 2013

Wrong Means Right End- Book Review

Synopsis-

Readers fell in love with Sneha and Nandini, two best friends who stuck to each other through heartbreak and joy in the bestselling novel, Right Fit Wrong Shoe. Now they are back in a delightful sequel that follows the two women as they begin the next phase of their lives in Mumbai.
After a failed marriage, Sneha, a single working mom, has no time, or inclination, for love. She resists every matchmaking attempt made by the overzealous Nandini, married to industrialist Aditya. But then the past intrudes in the form of the gorgeous and rich, Nikhil, who brings along Gayatri to break-up her ex-fianc, Adityas marriage. Sneha enlists Nikhils help to salvage the situation. But how does she even talk to a man who clearly loathes her? As Nikhil and Sneha try to grapple with their egos and combustible chemistry, love blossoms.
Wrong Means Right End, an exuberant story about love and friendship, is filled with surprises and a wicked twist at every turn.
 
My Review
 
Not all marriages work out. Sneha, the protagonist of the book married the wrong person and for wrong reasons. Now, she is a divorced single mom to Advey. Aditya Sarin and her best friend Nandini have readily accepted her as a part of their world. Nandini however is still hopeful for Sneha and despite her resistance she is in no mood to give up on her matchmaking efforts. Sneha is grateful to the couple for just too many reasons. Thus when Nikhil suddenly gives her the news of Gayatri, Aditya's ex-fiancée being back in town and not being completely over with whatever happened, she sets out on doing her bit to make things alright.
 
Pro's
  1. The colors of the cover merge just too well.
  2. The plot. Things get hilarious at times with Sneha. And I, as a reader enjoy it.
  3. The cuss words. They are a major highlight.
  4. Believe it or not, the book summary is a huge hit. I love how it gives that little hint about everything.
 
Cons-
Things get really predictable and even though you can sincerely relate to the story, the characters it does become a major flaw. When the author has a good sense of humour, I expect way more in terms of narration which again turned me off about this book.
 
About the Author
 
About the Author
Varsha Dixit is the author of the bestselling novel, Right Fit Wrong Shoe (2009) and Xcess Baggage (2010). She worked in the television industry in Mumbai for a few years before moving to the US with her family.
Varsha loves to write fiction. Suspense, romance and humour are her favourite genres. She actively interacts with readers through her website www.varshadixit. com. Varsha also communicates through her book groups Right Fit Wrong Shoe & Xcess Baggage, Wrong Means Right End on Facebook. Her Twitter handle is Varsha20.
 






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