![With You I Dance: A Book Review]()
review, Romance |
How far would you go further when you have realized that your dreams are shattered? What if it were the one thing that kept you alive and kicking? Would you forgive yourself if you were the only one that was responsible for your fall? Read my book review of With you I Dance by Aarti Raman to know more.
About With you I Dance
Book Name: With You I Dance
Author: Aarti V. Raman
Genre: Fiction – Romance
Characters: Meera, Zoya, Abheer
Setting: India
Disclaimer: I received this book from the FingerPrint Publishers free of cost in return for an honest review.
Plot summary of With you I Dance
Meera Sagar had nothing to do but to return back to India after an on stage debacle during her very first performance as a principal ballerina at New York. She is failing at resisting her parents’ attempt to get her married and settled, as any typical Indian family would want to, but she has a larger problem at hand. She isn’t able to dance anymore.
Enter Abheer and Zoya, who trust her dreams and give her a lifeline to save herself. Does she or rather can she? Read With you I Dance by Aarti Raman to find out.
Book review of With you I Dance
Sometimes you get tired of chasing the serial killers, apocalypse and paranormal creatures in books, that all you want to do is pick a chicklit and curl up in a corner of your bed.
Well, I did.
Yet I was also dreading to take that risk after the few fiascoes I survived on this genre. Thankfully my fear was unfounded. I liked the author’s writing and the easy pace of the story, by which I mean there were no extraneous twists and turns just for the heck of it.
Though I had no affinity towards the protagonist Meera (rather felt irritated with her, more on that follows), I did like the feisty, helpful yet no nonsense Zoya better. Abheer is definitely drool worthy but I hated that he was not given his due, by both Meera and the author. That brings on my personal rant over the protagonist, Meera.
I do understand her flightiness and her trying to be independent and self-standing etc but it didn’t work its magic on me. I personally hated her double standards and disrespect to everyone else’s feelings and lives. But you know what, it is long since I have felt something for a character – be it good or bad. Kudos on doing that, Author Aarti.
I liked the overall easy pace and positivity throughout the story, even after all that is lost. I liked the flawed characters and realistic storyline.
Bottom-line
Pick With you I Dance by Aarti Raman up if you want to read an easy romance that doesn’t ask you to pawn your brain and grammar for a storyline.
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![With You I Dance: A Book Review]()
review, Romance |
I remember complaining to one of my friends that I need a simple, ordinary love story to read. You might be surprised to hear that those are rare, these days. I have had enough of vampires sucking blood, werewolves fighting with their clans for a mortal and how could I forget offspring from the future come to haunt you. I was ranting on why it was difficult to give me a simple romance for once. Then I got 300 Days
by Bragadeesh Prasanna in exchange for a review.
You know what it is – an uncomplicated love story a boy meets girl, boy likes her, boy gets her and then boy doesn’t – he grows up. The story that would be easy to relate to almost everyone, the kind that we hope happens to us just to experience the warm gushy feeling and then suffer through the gut punching pain all in the name of love.
Book Name: 300 Days
Author: Bragadeesh Prasanna
Genre: Fiction – Romance
Characters: Jai, Sravani, Sai, Sindhuja, Chris
Setting: India
Jai meets Sravani in the midst of a forest, during a trek and falls head over heels for her. Sravani is a shy girl who is already in a committed relationship with Sai. The story narrates how Jai convinces Sravani that he is the one for her and to break up with Sai after two years of silence. But when things seem to settle down for the couple and they decide to tie knots, their world turns upside down once more.
The story also narrates the relationship of Jai with his best friends Sindhuja and Chris and their lives is drawn parallel. I liked the protagonist, even if he was the typical south Indian guy and did not do anything that is impressionable. Yeah the kind of guy we usually friendzone at the first instant – the kind of guy we run to when we have an issue. I liked him, but neither do I approve nor would want someone to do the things he does, for me – so yes I feel obviously like Sinduja. (I will get to that later).
I can not say the same thing about Chilakamma, oops Sravani. Having met enough number of Sravani’s in my life understanding her shouldn’t have been difficult, but I felt nothing towards her. Maybe that is due to the one dimensional development of her character. I loved Sinduja, she seemed my kind of girl; someone I could be friends with, and cursed the author for never giving her her dues, apart from the long ‘marketing dialogues’ (using Sravani’s words) on their sibling love and everything else. What is the deal with her and Vinod?
I understand the stale state of relationship between Jai and his family, but it is really odd to see him being so attentive to Sravani, Sailu and their family and even Viji and then completely leaving his family out of the picture. Is there something I am missing about his character? I loved the writing style of the author. There were too many instances in the story that made me feel as this is as real as it can get. I somehow predicted the end was not going to be something that I was rooting for, but I was okay with the ending as it made sense.
I loved the beginning of the novel in terms of the language. I did not even have to wait for something to happen, because I was reeling among the words. The critic in me wanted to go past the mundane trek itinerary, which had nothing to do with the story at all, but the language lover wanted to stay. There were too many conversations between Jai and Sravani – I mean too much to even care for. I don’t want a peep into someone else’s diary, especially if it was not going to contribute to the pace of the story.
The pace of the story wavers; it was slow – accelerated – then a bit drag and all of a sudden at a jet speed and there we are at the end. But having said that, I couldn’t put the book down even when the pace was slow. If you love a simple, no nonsense love story with beautiful language 300 Days could be your pick.
review |
Sometimes you take too long to complete a book and then you don’t want to attempt to capture your feelings about it – because you are sure you are not going to do a justice to it. What makes it harder is that you are not quite familiar with the genre. Yes that is what ‘Songs of the Mist’ did to me – rather has been doing to me – yet am giving an attempt.
Book Name: Songs of the Mist: Volume 1 (The Monk Key Series)
Author: Shashi
Genre: Fiction – Spiritual
Characters: Ashutosh, Ayan, Vasudha, Calliope, Kyaka, the Monk
Disclaimer: I received this book from the author free of cost in return for an honest review.
Five persons from different walks of life and world take a journey of their lifetime to meet a Monk at the Himalayan range. They almost have nothing in common except their thirst to try to seek and learn what they know not about life. No, this has not much to about their pain and suffering (there is), as their paths and destiny towards the Himalaya in search of the elusive Monk.
I was comparing our TBR piles with a friend of mine and he mentioned about the book that he had recently and how much he enjoyed it, adding that it would not be my cup of tea at all yet that I should give it a chance some day “when I grow up” (yup that is what he said). That irked me as well as perked up my curiosity, and ended up listening to him going gaga over ‘Songs Of the Mist’, and this happened to be, just a day or two after I received the book for review. Needless to say, the subject handled is not at all my forte or even something that I might wonder into during one of my lost trail of thoughts. Yet here I am doing the same thing that ‘the’ friend did to me – going gaga about it to people who may not even venture out to these kinda books.
Remember, when you read or I made you read “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” before it became the ‘cool’ book? People who said me this was similar to it, you are wrong, this book is lot more than that. I should warn you, this is not an easy read. This is not the book you can read on a dentist waiting room (I tried doing that) nor a book that you would want to breeze through to increase your reading count. But you have to read it – if you had questions that were too cool to ask your parents or those answers you smirk at when they give you. It is a really hard book to get hooked to at least in the first few pages and then out of nowhere you seemed to be nodding without realizing you are.
I am pushing off writing what I really liked about the book. Shashi’s writing style and clarity of thoughts. His language held my attention in a book which has such a serious subject, too many descriptive sentences for my liking and a not so fast moving story. Just when you were about to skip a line or so, (only because novels these days requires not more than a speed reading, am not sorry to say that) he just grabs the attention with something so off your balance that you are nodding your head to glory, once again.
Here those few lines that I had to share because they resonated with my line of thoughts.
Never worry about the path. Just take care of the steps you take.
Don’t grieve for desires that are not fulfilled. Sometimes the things that don’t happen keep disasters from happening too.
Passion focuses your mind to one thing that you are doing and leaves no space for something else to enter
This book would be an interesting read if you want to read about not so mundane questions that you can’t ask others, like ‘why we draw a circle of water around the plate before we eat?(pariseshanam – I think)’ or ‘why would anyone want to live at such harsh living conditions near Himalayas?. It would be a sure read if you were among the ones that discuss and think about self realization or worry what we do here – go read his book and go have a chat with the author, right then. If you don’t fall in either of the categories, and you are anything like me – just go read for his language, nuances and attention to minutest detail, and for once – the crisp edit, even if the genre is not your cuppa tea.
P.S I hadn’t known until I almost finished my review that the brilliant editing was from our very own CBC’s Mahesh and Nandhitha. Kudos to you, guys – super proud.
Everyone one of us would have tried playing the sleuth when we were young, thanks to the Enid Blyton and Carolyn Keene books like the Secret Seven and Famous Five and Nancy Drew. Even Scooby Doo and friends helped us to imagine ourselves as the clue finders, that we were not. A few days ago, I unlocked my house to find the living room a mess. Of course, I had to be the detective that I always wanted to be, to deduce and choose between the hot wind or the mouse as the culprit behind the ransack. I carefully analysed the window placement and probable direction of the wind and decided to blame it. I also was joyous that it could not have been the mouse, as there was no other damage found around the house. I do not know if I should feel happy or foolish that I didn’t think of any other possibility for having a mess inside a locked house, like a thievery or a ghost phenomenon.
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