#BookReview: A Barren Heart by Shilpa Suraj

A Barren Heart by Shilpa Suraj
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aman and Rhea seem to have the perfect marriage. They are madly in love - with each other, with their own careers and the home and life they are building in a quiet Mumbai suburb.

What could possibly be lacking in their picture-perfect marriage? A baby. Like most women, thirty-plus Rhea Chakraborty wants to hold her own flesh and blood in her arms. And Aman too wants the same. Or does he? 

After another unexplained miscarriage that takes a severe emotional, physical, and psychological toll on them, Aman isn't sure if having a baby will complete them or destroy them.


Last month I read Shilpa Suraj's book - Love, Marriage & other disasters. What I loved in the book was how she had written a very heartfelt , simple yet much relevant story of characters that readers would relate to easily. So, when I was offered a chance to review her new work, I was very excited to see how she presented this story. Glad to mention that she did not disappoint with Barren Heart.

Barren Heart revolves around various stages/struggles women face while trying to get pregnant. What feels like a natural process, is too hard for some of the women and each one has her own "family planning" story. Some of the plot lines & conversations in the book felt very real and I could recall some friends sharing similar stories with me or their girlfriends. The pain, the confusion, the reactions of friends, and family were portrayed well and I felt a lot of empathy for Rhea. Both Rhea & Aman are successful, independent and loving persons who are pillars to each other. While Rhea has her own family drama, Aman's childhood wasn't good. Which binds them together but also makes them lonely without each other.

Sometimes, I felt that she & Aman took some of the arguments too seriously. Some of the fights and the eventual making up scenes felt repetitive and not too impactful to the rest of the story. Rhea's issues with her family were mostly unresolved which did not make much difference but I was left wondering still. Nevertheless, Reading this book felt like listening to my own heart's voices at times .. This is a beautiful story of a marriage that survives being hurt, the fights & differences between the couple. It is a happy ever after ending but with a very realistic picture that all marriages go through highs & lows and some low are literally rock bottom for one or both parties. How you build yourself from those moments is what matters in the long run.

This is a well narrated story that has roots in modern lifestyle , characters who you get attached to and a satisfying end.

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#BookReview: Physical: The catastrophe of desire by Mari.Reiza

Physical: The catastrophe of desire by mari reiza
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Some times you begin a book with little expectation and find struggling to identify with the character, any character actually. This happened for me with Physical as I just could not empathize with Kiki - whose breakup has left her a little mad and the lonely craziness is just eating her up. I felt her hurt and understood her true self behind the angry mask but she still made me feel frustrated with her. Then the story flips to Fatima, Kiki's best friend, a new mother of twins who is stuck at home after pregnancy and feels her worth fading away. Now that's a feeling I so very well know - by thinking of a time when I simply slip out of others memories and left alone. And gradually I got engrossed in the book. I wanted to see what breaks / makes these two ladies and their friendship evolve.

At a certain point in the story, it became my story. I could feel this play out between me and a friend of mine wondering together, where we walked our own way and this book showed how we can miss the signs even in our closest friends.

A short read, this is emotioanl, fun, beautifully true and so relatable story of Love and desire i  in modern times.

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#Review: Friends and Other Liars by Kaela Coble

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started this book with some expectations based on the Goodreads review.  And they were all met but in a way I had not expected. I expected the secrets to be really more sinister and maybe directly hurting the narrator.  But in bargain , the way the secrets impact the people close to them and the everyone's life is so amazingly captured in the book. I hated some characters ,empathized with some and in the end , I fell in love with each one of them. That's how this book hooks the reader and make you feel concerned. This was a beautiful story. Tragic ,but so full of real wise words. I had a hard time letting this one go.

About the Author: 
KaelaCoble lives in Burlington, Vermont, and is a member of the League of Vermont Writers and a graduate of the WoMentoring Project. This is her first novel.

Website: https://kaelacoble.com/


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The house that BJ built by Anuja Chauhan

I have not read Anuja’s any book before this but I had heard great reviews for them. Not to forget that my mother likes the show based on Thakur girls , so I was overjoyed when I got a chance to review “the house that BJ built”. First thing that I realized when I started reading the book was that people are people. There is no rich / classy / poor / crass kind of attitude. We all are just human having a hell lot of qualities which are too hard to explain. Though this is the story of Bonu ( Bonita ) and Samar ( her step cousin ) , the generation after The Pricey Thakur girls ; I got a good amount of background story and character analysis on the sisters and the Thakur clan as a whole. The story set up in Delhi has all the necessary ingredients of a well-crafted story with strong characters , the cunning relatives and the human greed that has made blood thinner than water. Plus the plotting by powerful agencies like builders , self declared mafia and likes. 

The book also touches upon the dramas and entertainment of a family that has people from different backgrounds and how their current situations shape their mindsets. There was a particular scene where Bonu’s uncle wonders about ignoring her while trying to save the world through his news channel. That is exactly how I feel about a lot of people who are fighting for bigger causes. We somewhere ignore and forget the people who are closer to us and who need our love just the same.  I could feel Bonu’s loneliness , her strength , her will power and anger all perfectly well in the story that picks pace with the grandfather BJ’s death and his brother filing a case for the eviction of the house where Bonu and his aunts had once spent their childhood. Following Bonu’s and Samar’s adventures through Mumbai and Delhi , Anuja has created a wonderful book that doesn’t let you stop reading without a tiny bit of irritation. The characters are somewhat very real and I found identifying in them a few friends I know. 

 I now want to read the first Thakur girls novel soon since I loved this one a lot. 

My rating : 5/5

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Title: Wife 22
Author: Melanie Gideon
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
ISBN: 978-0-345-52795-0
First Published: 2012
Genre: Fiction,Family Saga
Pages: 400
Rating: 4.5/5



Summary (From Goodreads):


Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.
But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101). 
And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
 
7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children.
67. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What youshouldn’t have.
32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.

Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.
But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions. 
 
As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.


What I feel: 


I had received this book as part of Good Reads First Reads Giveaway.Since this was my first win,I was way excited.The book hit the stores on May 29,2012.
I have no idea why I didn't devour this book the moment I received the package.Instead,I stack up this book in my 'to-read' collection.It was on one of those monotonous days I browsed through my book collection and there it was.

First of all, I loved the cover page.Looked fresh& chic.I straightaway fell in love with the main character,Alice Buckle.The story line is about Alice,middle aged ,nearing her 45th birthday, who is not sure whether she is bored of her life or plain tired!She is, wife of William Buckle, mother of Zoe Buckle (15 year old teenager, with all the tantrums and rebellious behaviors in full swing) & Peter Buckle (sensitive and wholly adorable,convincing his mom that her son could be gay!),best friend to Nedra Rao(Has your friend ever advised you NOT to do something, nevertheless you go ahead  and do it and go back to your friend nursing a broken heart and yet she has her arms wide open for you?Well that's the relationship between Nedra and Alice)& a drama teacher in a school.
At this point in her life, her life is more or less predictable.She feels her marriage of 2 decades has lost its passion,her relationship with her kids have seen better days,she still mourns her mother's death as she nears the age when her mother had died.The part where she deals with her mother's death makes the character real.It shows,no matter how old we grow,our mothers are the ones we can always depend on.

On a fateful day,when she feels there is nothing exciting happening in her life and the distance between her and her husband is increasing by the day,she receives a spam mail inviting her to participate in an online study of marriages.Little does she know that this could change her life and her marriage for ever! All she had to do was answer a questionnaire in return for $1000 at the end of the study.As a part of the study she is given a pseudonym 'Wife 22' and her case is a dealt by a 'Researcher 101' with whom an she develops a fervent relationship,online.What is the name of this relationship?Where is it leading? What will happen to her marriage and family?Who is this Researcher 101? All these questions gets you hooked till the last page of this book.

What I particularly enjoyed in the book was,side by side to the normal narration of the story,there were numerous text messages,Facebook updates,Twitter updates,playwriting scenes and Google searches!!The readers get a chance to read the answers to the questionnaire,however the questions were nowhere in sight.It was a little frustrating until I flipped through the end pages and voila the questions are all there in the appendix section!The chapters were short and lucid.My favorite character was Researcher 101.Charming fellow! Who wouldn't love him?!

The portrayal of the characters were all real.Imperfect,quirky and yet lovable.I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.Bravo Melanie Gideon!


 In a nutshell-'easy on the eyes',light read.