Just One of The Guys

Just One of the Guys

by Kristan Higgins

 

Paperback, 376 pages

Published: August 01, 2008

Publisher:  Harlequin Books

ISBN:  9780373772995

Blurb: Being one of the guys isn't all it's cracked up to be...So when journalist Chastity O'Neill returns to her hometown, she decides it's time to start working on some of those feminine wiles. Two tiny problems: #1--she's five feet eleven inches of rock-solid girl power, and #2--she's cursed with four alpha male older brothers.

While doing a story on local heroes, she meets a hunky doctor and things start to look up. Now there's only one problem: Trevor Meade, her first love and the one man she's never quite gotten over--although he seems to have gotten over her just fine.

Yet the more time she spends with Dr. Perfect, the better Trevor looks. But even with the in-your-face competition, the irresistible Trevor just can't seem to see Chastity as anything more than just one of the guys...

This was recommended to me by a bibliophile friend and she said that it was amazing after I told her that I quite love reading chick-lit. It had been on my to-read list for about two years when I finally picked it up a couple of weeks ago. It was my first Kristan Higgins book and my expectations were real high with this one. Ah, read on…

The book starts out quite nice, in a way. With our protagonist – Chastity- being dumped by a guy at a restaurant is a starting scene written brilliantly by Kristan Higgins. Just perfect to grab the reader’s attention when the guy admits that he is dumping Chastity because she is too manly- in looks as well as actions. We’re told many a time through the book that she is broad-shouldered, athletic, five feet eleven inches and three-quarters. The monologues, the descriptions, the details are just perfect for the reader to connect to Chastity.

Chastity has come down to Eaton Falls giving up her amazing job in a big city to work at the local newspaper, Eaton Falls Gazette, and to be near her family in the town she has grown up. Moreover, Chastity is thirty and plans to settle down, and of course, she seems to have no great luck.

One of the strong points in this book is the grand character formation. Higgins might seem to have created a village of characters, but you won’t feel lost in them. She makes them alive, you see them living right before your eyes. Creating and successfully sustaining the huge family of Chastity in the reader’s hear right up to the end from the very beginning is a commendable job done by the author. It won’t have been as easy as it seems.

Rest, I don’t think there was much great to the book. It was supposed to be a laugh out loud kind of a read, but it failed miserably at that. I found it droning and droning and droning on and on and on. Even if the character formation is great, there is at times too much of the ‘family thing’ going on. An overdose, as you may call it. There are troubles in marriage and relationships all over this book which gives it a tinge of hopelessness. Higgins has also tried to as a spicy mystery to the plot by adding a fine number of twists, but she has failed at them too. Chasity seems to struggle too much with trivialities. Much more than she or the readers can handle. And that is what drove me to edge.

If I am to compare this with a Sophie Kinsella read, the act itself would be extremely absurd. I have read much better in chick-lit than Just One of the Guys and it doesn’t even remotely match their standards. It would be appropriate to say that if you want to see how a chick-lit can torture a lover of the genre, read this one. Otherwise, you know what to do, right? Yes, do yourself a favour and spare yourself the headache it could give you. 

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

By Charles Dickens

Paperback, 382 pages

First Published in:  1854

Publisher:  Bantam Classics

ISBN:  9780553211764 

Blurb:  'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' 

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

A masterful pageant of idealism, love, and adventure -- in a Paris bursting with revolutionary frenzy, and a London alive with anxious anticipation -- A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dickens's most energetic and exciting works. 

Doctor Alexander Manette has been captured in the prison of Bastille, before the French Revolution, and has almost lost his senses in the eighteen years of exile from the world beyond his cell. When an old friend and banker, Jarvis Lorry, summons Dr Manette’s daughter, Lucie Manette, on the pretext of settling some issues of the property that her ‘dead’ father has left her, she agrees to meet him in Dover. After circumlocution, Mr Lorry eventually tells Lucie that they are to get her father back from St Antoine in Paris. After hearing the news, Lucie passes out. Soon after, they are on their way to St. Antoine, for the Resurrection of Dr Alexander Manette.

I wasn’t acquainted with Dickens’ writings before I picked up A Tale of Two Cities. Although, I had read David Copperfield as a child, I don’t remember any of it now. Except hating Uriah Heep.

 However, a lover of World history, I loved the way the conditions of both France and England have been portrayed with n number of metaphors. Apart from what I had read in high school, I knew nothing of the French Revolution. But Dickens does not show us just history. He shows us lives of people of the Guillotine. Or even that of people in England. Many say that Dickens relied on Carlyle’s The French Revolution for writing A Tale of Two Cities, which in itself wasn’t very correct in exploring the history of the event. While many say, that Dickens corrected over the facts before writing A Tale of Two Cities. Whatever it is, as Dickens tells me of these lives, I take them as gospel.

The second part of the book was quite a task. I couldn’t take much of Charles Darnay’s courting Lucie, Sydney Carton’s drinking bouts, Dr Mantette’s madness, the blabbering of Miss Pross, the messy hair of Jerry Cruncher, and his wife’s praying against his will. I drudged along as I read each paragraph of the Book Two. I was dreaming of the next book I would read after the torment Dickens was doing on me would be over. God! How I hated the second part of the book. I found it agonizing and tiresome with all the stupid and banal details. If I have forced myself to read a book to the verge of madness, it was A Tale of Two Cities’ Book Two. Had it not been in my literature course, I would have stopped right there and chucked it out of my window.

Had this been my first Dickens’ novel, I think I won’t have picked  him up again. But I read a little of A Christmas Carol, and it was damn hilarious. I don’t know if Dickens tried to show off too much with all the symbolism and metaphors deliberately in A Tale of Two Cities, just to prove something. I didn’t like it much.

The Third part of the book was finally where I picked, I mean, the book picked momentum again. I loved the third part of it. It was all business, and no bullshit; unlike book two. I so want to reveal the plot and say how much I loved every aspect of it. But I know, no spoilers.

However, I love Sydney Carton. Hell with Darnay! Carton is my real hero, and I think everybody who has read the book would fall in love with Sydney Carton. I cannot stop thinking about poor Carton since I finished reading ATOTC.

The Book Three is a heart wrencher. It makes the torment of the rest of the book worthwhile.

However, the recommendation would be that if you haven’t read Dickens before, DO NOT ATTEMPT to read A Tale of Two Cities for the first one of his series of books. I would have said that you shouldn’t read it at all, however, just for the sake of Sydney Carton, I say that you definitely should. 

Wedding Night

Wedding Night

by Sophie Kinsella

Paperback, Large Print, 400 pages

Published on:  April 25th 2013

Publisher:  Bantam Press 

ISBN: 9780593070154

Blurb:  Lottie just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose during lunch at one of London’s fanciest restaurants. But when his big question involves a trip abroad, not a trip down the aisle, she’s completely crushed. So when Ben, an old flame, calls her out of the blue and reminds Lottie of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. No formal dates—just a quick march to the altar and a honeymoon on Ikonos, the sun-drenched Greek island where they first met years ago.
 
Their family and friends are horrified. Fliss, Lottie’s older sister, knows that Lottie can be impulsive—but surely this is her worst decision yet. And Ben’s colleague Lorcan fears that this hasty marriage will ruin his friend’s career. To keep Lottie and Ben from making a terrible mistake, Fliss concocts an elaborate scheme to sabotage their wedding night. As she and Lorcan jet off to Ikonos in pursuit, Lottie and Ben are in for a honeymoon to remember, for better . . . or worse.

Sophie Kinsella being on the top of the list of my most favourite authors, I was more than dying to read her latest release, Wedding Night. I had been excitedly waiting for it since May last year when I heard that Kinsella was penning down yet another book called Wedding Night.

The book starts when one of our protags, Lottie is with her four year long boyfriend Richard in a restaurant anticipating a proposal that Richard is supposedly going to make. Sadly, it doesn’t turn out to be anything of the kind for Lottie and thus with the inevitable breakup of the couple, Lottie is shattered.

On the other hand, Lottie’s sister- Fliss, is in the middle of a bitter divorce with Daniel which is also making her seven year old son, Noah, suffer a great deal.

When the crestfallen Lottie suddenly has an encounter with her first love from fifteen years ago, and decides on the spur of the moment to get married to him asap, Fliss is alarmed. Fearing it to be one of Lottie’s Unfortunate Choices, and that  Lottie would end up in the same situation as hers, Fliss is hell bent on getting their ‘annulment’ done, by keeping Lottie and Ben from consummating their marriage at their honeymoon and of course keep them from having a Wedding Night.

The most wonderful thing about the book is the new idea of the three POVs that Kinsella has used for the first time in her writings. We are mainly told the story from both Lottie and Fliss’s POV, and at just a couple of times Arthur has his POV too. And the concept is amazing.

The troubles Fliss puts Ben and Lottie in on their honeymoon are hilarious, ludicrous and saddening at the same time. Kinsella has maintained her standards and has given us yet another fantastic read.

The thing about Kinsella is that she is real in her writing. There is hardly anything in her novels that you feel is unrealistic. The way she pulls the whole thing together is always worth kudos. And with all the belly laughs she gives you, she’d be gripping you to her book with all your emotions. And Wedding Night is no different.

But, there was a slight shift in her writing style this time in Wedding Night. There seemed to be a merger of her writing as Sophie Kinsella and Madeleine Wickham. This made me a little edgy at times. The book lags a little behind in humour compared to her predecessors. There weren’t many moments when I burst out laughing as I read through the text. Comparatively, I’ve Got Your Number was a step ahead in this regard and from the plot POV.

There isn’t much going on about in the book apart from Ben and Lottie being desperate to make out and Fliss trying to stop them from doing it. And then there’s another subplot of Fliss’s bitterness about her divorce, but that doesn’t have a great heat to it either.

It in no way means that Kinsella ha even a bit lost her creativity. She keeps on surprising you with a billion things, especially towards the second half of the book and you’d absolutely be on tenterhooks. She just keeps you guessing and guessing about the characters’ next move.

Lorcan, Ben’s best friend, was my most favourite character. And even though she was caring, Fliss was a Bitch.

The thing that disappointed me a little is that there were some loose ends to the end of the novel which should have been tied. I wanted to know what would happen of Lorcan and Fliss. About Lottie and Richard. About Nico’s special package at the honeymoon suite. Many things. But, we get to know nothing of them.

To sum it up, Wedding Night is quirky, humorous, breezy, emotional and an entertaining read. You will feel Lottie and Richard’s pain after the heartbreak, would worry as Fliss gets worried about her kin (and at times hate her for it), and will be as frustrated as Ben and Lottie when they don’t get to have their so-longed-for Wedding Night on their honeymoon. And reading between the lines, you will smile and giggle and laugh.

It is a must read for all the Kinsella fans, but they shouldn’t expect anything better than what they had in IGYN. And for people who haven’t read Kinsella yet, they should start their summer breaks with Wedding Night in their hands and getting introduced to the incredible writer on the coming weekends. 

Life Is Always Aimless

Life is Always Aimless.......

Unless You love It

by Ratnadip Acharya

Paperback, 216 pages

Published: January  2013

Publisher: Srishti Publishers

ISBN: 9789380349831

Blurb: Do we you really know how much courage is required to listen to our own heart? 

Meet Akash, an young engineer, who dreams of becoming a writer. But all his works meet with is rejection from publisher. Will he ever be rewarded for listening to his heart? 

Smitten by wanderlust, adventurous Sandip does not care much about career, marriage or making a family. How will life treat him for listening to his heart? 

Possessor of a charming personality, Chirag, has a deep penchant for women. But deep down the motherless Chirag is terribly lonely. What is in store for this vulnerable young man? 

Maria Fernandez is a lonely and a less-than- looking young girl who firmly believes that possessing a tender heart is enough to make her world beautiful. Will ruthless life shatter her belief? 

As their life got seamlessly inter-wined with many others they realized that Life is Always Aimless .... Unless You Love it.

I’d been closing on reviewing once I got this book to review. Supposedly, my last one at that time, I accepted it with open arms.

The book starts with a bunch of people staying at a hostel for the new recruits of ICL. Away from home, and adjusting with multitudes of people and ideologies, this book divulges us into the different stories of a group of these people.

The cover of the book with the shades of violet, blue and lavender, a reader like me would be instantly attracted to it. But, I felt a little lack of detail in the design which might prove to be a down for the mass market buyers. The billboard of the book might attract some, while some will just pass the glance over it. Nevertheless, the cover is in sync with the plot.

A wonderful thing about Ratnadip Acharya is that he hasn’t just followed the trend. Yes, we do have engineers in it, but it is beyond the contemporary Indian fiction we find in the market. Ratnadip Acharya has thought out of the box, leaving aside banal conversations and unnecessary intimacies. The plot, compared to the rest of the contemporaries in the market, is serious and mature. It is a daring step enough in itself for defying the trends doesn’t work all the time.

Though the story is fine, but a little hindrance to successfully finishing the book would be its slower pace. The plot moves excessively slow, especially in the first half. By the time it picks up momentum about after half of the book, the reader might as well have stopped reading much before it. I found certain parts of the chapters quite unnecessarily having a place in the text, while they technically contribute very little to the main plot of the story. At such point, the story seems to just drag a little.

The language of the book is lucid. The text is in cohesion and the descriptions and POV’s are well taken care of. The chapters, if could have been a little less longer, would’ve provided a breeze to the flow of the book. The book stands by its title until the end of it, which wins it another plus point.

The other things that should’ve been taken care of are the sudden introduction of a village of characters right in the first chapter. If you read one chapter today, and the next tomorrow, you might even forget the who’s who of the book, until ofcourse, you get used to it.

Above all, the book stands upto the expectations and has a nice rhythm to it. If you are to spend a lazy weekend this week, have a buy at Ratnadip Acharya’s Life is Always Aimless.

I wish Mr. Acharya all the best with the book.

Dear John

Dear John

Nicholas Sparks

Paperback,  335 pages

Published on:  December 01, 2009

Publisher:  Little Brown Book Group  

ISBN:  9780446567336   

             

Blurb:  When John met Savannah, he knew he was ready to turn over a new leaf. Always the angry rebel, he had dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life. Then he meets Savannah. The attraction is mutual and quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah vowing to wait for John while he finishes his tour of duty.

What neither realizes is that 9/11 will change everything; prompting John to re-enlist and fulfill what he feels is his duty to his country and fellow soldiers. And, sadly, as so often happens when lovers are young and separations are long, Savannah falls in love with someone else. 'Dear John . . . ' the letter reads, and both their lives are changed forever.

Years later, when John returns to North Carolina, he must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still the only one for him. Now John must make the hardest decision of his life.

I had come across Nicholas Sparks accidentally after getting my hands on his marvelously written book, A Bend in the Road. After I was mesmerized by the tale telling capabilities of Sparks, I immediately added him to the list of my most favourite authors.

There is one more thing that Nicholas Sparks owes the credit for in my life – my affinity to the Romance genre of Fiction. I won’t have been a lover of Contemporary Romance novels had it not been Dear John, A Bend in the Road, The Last song and of course, The Notebook.

Dear John, is undoubtedly my most favourite Sparks novel. The story of a cop of the US Army- John Tyree, and the love of his life- Savannah.

John has come on a leave from his army camp, when he meets Savannah at a beach. Savannah is in North Carolina on her vacations, volunteering in building houses for the poor. Though he sees her a couple of times, he doesn’t get enough dime from Savannah until he fetches her bag that falls in the water.

This book is filled with emotions. You will feel love, hatred, envy, longing, desperation, heart ache and everything you can think of getting from a perfectly emotion packed novel. This book gave me one of the best emotional experiences I have ever had reading a book. And THAT is what makes it one of my most favourite books.

The characters of John, Savannah, Tim, John’s father - Mr. Tyree are all extremely well drawn. While I was absolutely empathetic towards John, I developed a love-hate relationship with Savannah.

Many people say that they totally detested Savannah, but I don’t think she’s that detestable. The novel was very, very realistic. If we see it from John’s point of view, Savannah might be a bitch. But see it from Savannah’s perspective. I think it is only in idealistic situation that Savannah won’t leave John. But whatever she does, was quite natural for any other girl to do. Had I been in her place, I would have done the same. Savannah, I totally understand your situation.

The dialogues in the book are very realistic as well. Some of them will take your breath away. Even though it has been two years, I still remember many of the dialogues and monologues of the book by heart. They’ll remain etched in it for eternity.

The only think that made this book lose a star is that Nicholas Spark has downed his writing style a great deal. It was as if a teenager has written the book. Or a naïve man in his twenties. Although it was in first person’s voice, the voice of John Tyree, but I still didn’t like the difference I noticed between Sparks’ writing style in A Bend in the road or The Notebook and Dear John. It seems as if a completely different person has been hired to pen down this one.

But, people, if you want to read a marvelous piece of Contemporary Romance,, I recommend Dear John. You will love it!

Arranged Love

Arranged Love

By Parul A Mittal

 

Paperback, 256 pages

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published in: 2012

ISBN: 9780143418825

Blurb: Suhaani is enjoying her independent status in the US and her sexy Indian American boyfriend, when suddenly she loses her job to recession. And she's forced to move back to India where her father has selected a boy for her from his guitar class. 

Suhaani doesn1t know how to tell her Internet-savvy dad and Farmville-addict mother that she's not interested in an arranged match, especially to an IITian. She decides to dislike the guy. 

Except that he's not too thrilled about her either. 
Even when they end up working together, Suhaani decides she will not fall for this guy. 
But before she can turn him down, he rejects her!

A graduate at UMich, Suhani is head over heels in love with her Indian-American boyfriend Jay aka Jayant Guy. A painter at heart, Suhani is all set to make money out of a nude painting of her boyfriend. Looking at this American Adonis and getting the features of his exposed body on the canvass, all the accumulated libido is vanished into the air when Suhani’s father calls her up from India and asks her to check her email only to find the photo of a guy from her father’s guitar classes. A potential suitor for Suhani.

Things aren’t getting better when she even loses her job to recession and is compelled to fly back to India. She calls herself lucky when she finds a job at iTrot. But of course, she doesn’t know the boss is the Potential Suitor- Deepak Goyal.

The Chick-lit by Parul A Mittal is the story of So-Honey, as Jay calls her. Suhani is an average Indian girl like anyone of us. The only child, spoilt by her parents and loves unconditionally, she is one of the bubbliest characters I have come across in any Indian novel.

 Soon after you are through a few pages, you will immediately fall in love with Ms. Mittal’s quirky and witty humour. Though the plot can be very flimsy at times, you will find yourself giggling really very often. Humour used by Ms. Mittal is truly a thing worth Kudos to her. I loved the way she made me giggle.

For the people who loved Heartbreaks and Dreams: Girls @ IIT, Arranged Love is going to be a treat, undoubtedly. You will find the protagonist of Heartbreaks and Dreams, Tanu, treat you after every few pages.

Just like the highly well developed characters, the dialogues are exceptionally amazing. It is as if you are hearing the conversation of two people sitting next to you. Very real and crisp dialogues and sentences respectively were my favourite part of the book.

Another thing about the book that I absolutely loved was the mention of different songs at appropriate occasions. I could almost play them all in my mind.

The thing that irked me a little was that the author has portrayed the characters in a way that give more than necessary importance to physical pleasures. I do not think the girls today, or even in the past would have been that sex crazy as Ms. Mittal shows them to be. No doubt that our protag, Suhani is a virgin until the end, but I don’t think that could justify her or her friends being lewd at several instances.

The author has nicely pulled of Tanu’s story hand in hand with that if Suhani’s. But at places, I hated the mention of Tanu. I wanted to concentrate on the tragic comedies of Suhani’s life, and Tanu’s life barely meant anything to me for I  had not read Girls@IIT. But like I said, for the ones who wanted a sequel to Heartbreaks and Dreams, this one is a must read for them.

The ending became predictable a little before the book finished. But it could certainly have been something better. I personally was expecting an ending I would cherish, but sadly it was given a little less crunch than that it deserved.

Overall, this is a totally gripping read. If you are looking forward to a breezy, quick weekend read Parul Mittal’s Arrannged Love’s got to be at the top of your list.

I am eagerly waiting for her upcoming works.