Matches made in Heaven

Book Title: Matches made in Heaven
Author: Sundari Venkatraman
Genres: Fiction
Rating: 3

A collection of 13 romantic short stories based in India; a culture rich country steeped in tradition. Inspiration struck me from newspaper articles, TV shows and hearing people talk. The short stories are based on that fact that arranged marriages thrive right alongside love matches in India.

Review

Matches made in Heaven, a collection of romantic short stories, would make a blissful read when you are on a flight for a vacation or getting a pedicure done or hmm, u get the drift right? Relaxed and joyful and pampered.  The stories are straightforward, the characters unassuming. All the stories have been based on a spark of thought from real life. The transition from one story to next was quick and easy, given that I read a handful of stories at a time. On a similar note, I wish the Author had avoided repeating the same style of describing the character's appearance and their romantic encounters.

Breach

Book Title: Breach
Author: Amrita Chowdury
Genres: Fiction
Rating: 3

How secure are your secrets?

Weeks before Acel is ready to file the global patent application for Colare, a wonder drug for pancreatic cancer, the research data stored at its offshore data center in Mumbai goes haywire and Dr. Udai Vir Dhingra, the charismatic, Ivy-educated young leader of its Indian business, gets blamed.

The trail leads to Raghu Damodaran, a precocious teen exploring the very edges of what can be done in cyber space, and then gets lost.

Battling market pressures, media leaks, livid American bosses and crumbling relationships, Vir must find the real perpetrators or see his career - and his life - spiral downwards. Swept into a shadowy world of masked online identities and muddied digital footprints, Vir discovers that nothing is easy or obvious, and everything has a price.
Set in Mumbai, Washington DC and Suzhou, in an online-meets-offline adventure of cyber threats and IP espionage, drug research and medical ethics, strained affairs and lost love, disillusionment and hopelessness, Breach is a clever, fast-paced thriller full of surprises.

Review

I did read that blurb before starting to read the book but I imagined it would just have a hint of technical stuff. Now, having read the book , am surprised at how much research and understanding should have gone behind it. Its a well-researched and well-executed cyber thriller with a refreshing plot. With a long-forgotten software engineer background, I kept wondering how much of this will a 'layman' reader understand but from the other reviews on goodreads, I believe the Author has passed with flying colours on that aspect. 

Canvas of Dreams

Book Title: Canvas of Dreams

Author: Jaya Siva Murty

Genres: Fiction

Rating: 3

Riya seems to have lost everything—the man she loves to another woman, her husband to death and her soul to fear.
An unexpected meeting with her first love, Ryan, stirs up long repressed feelings but also allows her to move out of the long shadow of the past. Unburdened, she feels free to pursue her dream of opening an art gallery and the handsome and intriguing artist Rehaan. But memories of her marriage refuse to fade away and then suddenly, Ryan shows up in her life again. Now, Riya must find the courage to reconcile her past and present.
For Riya, life is a canvas of dreams. Can she distinguish between reality and fantasy?

Review

Canvas of Dreams is the story of Riya and the men in her life. Who stays, who stirs her up, what happens to her passion for Art unfolds with a lucid narration. For a debutant Author, the overall quality is commendable.The idea of using dreams to bring out the latent thoughts of Riya is interesting. I loved that the story was painted on the canvas of Art. I enjoyed understanding the kind of work a Curator does. 
On the flip side, Ryan's side of story remained hazy till the end. At the end, I particularly wondered about the point of view of Sia's daughter(I don't want to elaborate and be a spoiler). Though I liked this book, I reserved myself from giving an extra star because the book is not a racy or page-turner kind. I liked this book in the sense that the things that would have gone wrong didn't go wrong like flaws in the plot, unanswered questions, inconsistent characters or predictable flow of events.  Still, there are times when that is all you need. A breezy story and a cup of coffee. And Canvas of Dreams fits the bill.

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The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer

Book Title: The Many lives of Ruby Iyer
Author: Laxmi Hariharan
Genres: Fiction
Rating: 3

A YA action-thriller, with strong dystopian undertones and a kickass protagonist, taking you on a white knuckle ride through a disintegrating Bombay City.
When her best friend is kidnapped, Ruby will stop at nothing to rescue him.

Criminals run the streets of Bombay. Jam-packed with the worst degenerates. The city is a shell of the pride and joy it used to be.

Ruby knows something must be done, but it isn’t until her best friend is kidnapped by the despotic Dr. Braganza that she knows that she and she alone must save city, save her best friend, save the world from total destruction.

Armed only with with Vikram, a cop-turned-rogue they are about to embark on a road they may never return from.

If you’re looking for fast-paced books like Hunger Games or dystopia fiction like Angelfall, the Ruby Iyer series is perfect for you.

Review

The many lives of Ruby Iyer is a Young Adult thriller about a headstrong teenager desperate to rescue her friend thus uncovering the plot behind a falling city. She gets groped, pushed to death, transformed, manipulated and drawn into circumstances. Readinf through the first few chapers, the more she wanted to stay strong just for the heck of it and the more she tried to suppress her physical and emotional weariness, there was one thing I wanted to do. Give her a tight slap! Annoyingly, she is the protagonist and am right there, inside her head. I had to contain myself and get used to her. But as I completed the book and put it aside, it occurred to me that the way I felt about Ruby was indeed the Author's brilliance! I mean, to think of it, a girl on the cusp of teenage and adulthood from a dysfunctional family, fending for herself in a melting pot called Bombay, how else would you expect her to react?! 

Love, That Shit!

Love, That Shit! by Chandru Bhojwani

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When an old couple were asked how they managed to stay together for 65 years the woman replied, “We were born in a time, where if something was broke. You fixed it… not throw it away”. This piece of wisdom was making rounds in social networks sometime back and it had me pondering about it now and then. Love, that Shit by Chandru bhojwani is a light-hearted take on both fixing and throwing away as the case needs be. It is neither cliched nor preachy. It lets you step back a little and look at your relationships with renewed perspective and sense. Every chapter starts with a nice and apt quote followed by the author`s humorous and mature handling of the content. I really liked the way the author points out issues like high expectations and less tolerance. Another credit to the author is that he spoke for both gender without indulging in any over-hyped feministic theories.

Haveli

Haveli by Zeenat Mahal

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's always a pleasure to read a Indireads novella, the winning point being its quality. So far, I have read four and I never had a complaint about the characters, writing or the the story. The stories, being a novella, are just a slice but still you can get a hang of the whole picture. The characters aren't flat but have depth. The writing is undoubtedly above average, infact a few novellas make a distinct mark. I am now confident that Indireads is doing a sincere job handpicking deserving stories and author.

Talking about Haveli, its all that's mentioned above. The lead character Chandni comes across as a confident, egoistic women at the surface but she reveals her naive, dreamy little girl side to us, the readers. Orphaned at birth and brought up by her grandmother, she goes through a phase of illusioned love. The 'literary' conversations between Chandni and Taimur are interesting but would have become a overdose had it not been a Novella. Another aspect which of course did not bother me while reading but left me wondering later on was the story's setting. It's set in Pakistan in 1970s but that makes little difference to the story. Overall, another quality work from Indireads.

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The Eyes That Drowned Uyuni

The Eyes That Drowned Uyuni by Prashant Chopra

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The eyes that drowned Uyuni is a short and captivating read. The narration beautifully swings between the present and past of Parag, of how he lost his beloved wife Mriga and how he had won her. The portions expressing Parag's love for his child tugs at your heartstrings. I also loved the way the author brought out the intimacy between Parag and Mriga without getting into too much details. On the contrary, with its enigmatic end, this paranormal romance, or so I believe, had me reading it twice over because I wanted to make sure what I understood was what is implied. And in the process it made me speculate a little! (And a trivial observation is that the author tends to describe and express everything thrice, in different forms and ways).

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Against All Odds

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Against All Odds by Jazz Singh
My Rating 3 out 5 star

Against all odds, a simple love story with its lifelike characters and vivid narration is a compelling read. As the author unrolls the canvas, the characters spring into life as though they have been living next door all this time. Every character has an accurate portrayal irrespective of how big or small their role is.

What didn't work for me though are the portions depicting the intimacy between Sanjana and Abhimanyu. Its my personal opinion that premarital sex shouldn't been advocated in a book. It is still a taboo in our culture. There are exceptions in the society. Exceptions cannot define rules. Exceptions might soon become the norm. But let us not make it sooner. Books, these days are  increasingly having such obscene stuff. Let us spare another Sanjana in a small town to imagine it as a 'cool' thing taken lightly by the city-bred. Overall, a quick and relaxed read.

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The Redeemers

The Redeemers by Suresh Taneja

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Redeemers, the story of youngsters who masterminded a movement against corruption is an easy read. It has a tempting back blurb and a plot that is good enough for a blockbuster movie. I would love to see such books on bestsellers list rather than the ones portraying Modern India as so-called 'cool dudes' whose life revolves around partying, girl friends, pre-marital sex, boozing and the like. That said, this book falls short in many areas to be a best seller. Nevertheless, it is worth reading once.

As I had mentioned earlier, the strength of the book is its plot. Also, to think of children/youth as the target to solve corruption is a good strategy. Simple ideas such as this leaves me fascinated but the idea lacks brilliance when put across in words.

Talking about the flip side, first of all the incidents leading G4(the 4 friends are collectively called so, reminds of me of some summit!) to start a movement of such scale are not very impressive. I could not feel any pinch when G4 and their parents meet with the fabricated accident. May be it could have been more elaborate, a little more taxing for the youngsters and their family. Same is the case with the way the movement takes shape. The details are so shallow that it fails to create an impression. G4 admitting to the fact that they are direction-less but are committed to bring a change doesn't convince the reader, leave alone the people they come across.

Another aspect that troubles the reader is the writing. There is repetition of matter, shallow details and poor characterization. And the book cover could have been better!

To sum up, this book is neither a page-turner nor a 'read-few-pages-and-toss-it' kind. All it lacks is a little bit of drama for the kind of subject it handles.

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The Secret of the Nagas, Amish Tripathi

My rating for the Immortals of Meluha, the first in the Shiva trilogy was just 2 stars (It was ok). And I never had serious inclination to read the sequel. But there was only one reason for me to pick the book – the plot. And am glad I picked it up. I still couldn’t go beyond giving 3 stars (I liked it) owing to few shortcomings.

There is only ONE idea in this whole trilogy that appeals to me yet it is big enough to overpower my other opinions. The Plot. The idea of portraying Lord Shiva as ‘a simple man whose karma recast him as our Mahadev, The God of Gods’ and giving a fresh perspective to our mythological stories and characters is just BRILLIANT! I should admit, even before this trilogy happened, this perspective has been the most convincing one for me to have faith in Hindu gods, super powers they possessed, the power of our Vedas, Mantras etc. Of course, my imagination is very limited but the thought that there are things beyond my comprehension was and is enough for me.

Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair

I picked this book reading the synopsis,'The story of a woman's search for strength and independence'. When I started reading it, I could very well tune myself with akhila and her family, as if they lived in the neighbourhood. The characterisation of akhila's father is a perfect depiction of a common man with a family to feed, unhappy job and hand to mouth monthly wages. He is that common man who struggles to keep his moral values at his job only to be paid back with being mocked at and cornered. he is that man who lives through his unhappy job to earn a living and how his wife makes sure his Sundays are special in her own little way. His sudden demise and how akhila has no choice but to replace him as the head of the family are very convincing. But Why the author leaves a hint of akhila 's father choosing his own end and in what way it helps the story is something am yet to find an answer.