Rescued by Love - Book Review

Rescued by love is a novel by Shilpa Suraj. It is a mills and boons novel published under the Indian author series. Being a mills and boons novel you know what you should expect and what you should not.

Beautiful Naina Ahuja is the heroine. Her father is a Supreme Court judge. Naina is his only child. Still he hates her for he wanted a son. Her mother is a typical Indian woman who considers her husband pati parmeshwar and obeys his orders meekly. Her marriage is arranged against her wishes. She runs away to Ladakh without telling her parents. Terrorists kidnap Naina as her father is going deliver the judgment in trial of one of their colleagues. Our macho hero Lt. Col. Arjun Rathore is on a mission to rescue her. On the rescue mission they get cosy. Naina falls for him. For him it was just a little dose of adventure which she needed. Naina calls off the wedding. Her father sacks her out of the house. Once the mission is over, Arjun does not wish to keep any contacts with Naina. Naina takes up the job of a hostess in a hotel in Goa. After six months there is an engagement ceremony in the hotel. No prizes for guessing that the would be groom is none other than Arjun. Sparks fly again and with a little resistance the lovers are united.

As stated earlier this is a mills and boons novel. So the story has to be written in a given frame, incorporating all the quintessential elements of mills and boons. Then too Shilpa does a decent job by having Naina in captivity in the initial chapters. Though you keep on expecting that there will be confrontation between Arjun and the terrorists, it never happens. Naina and Arjun getting cosy on the rescue mission sounds bit unrealistic. A Supreme Court judge hating his only daughter that too when he is about to retire too sounds cliched. Can you believe that he eats up all the dosas without carrying whether there are any left for his daughter. Arjun's family life crisis is the end which the author seems to have forgotten to tie.

As regards the writing style is concerned phrases like “Arjun's quite voice”, “smiling sadly” etc. mar the narrative. How can a person have a quiet voice and how can he smile sadly? I think the author should upload videos showing the same. Similarly when the author says “With one last smile over his shoulder, he left” I kept on staring at my shoulder for hours together expecting that something would smile over it. The line “I'd rather it didn't come to that,” in my opinion is grammatically incorrect and does not make any sense.

The frequent references to erections are bad in taste. See “Every time he looked at her, his heart tightened, while other parts of his anatomy stood up and did a happy dance.” “Anything but the fact that a certain part of his anatomy was standing up and waving for attention,” comes another pearl of wisdom.

Don't think that merely because the woman is working here, the mills and boons heroine has been empowered. She is not doing well in her life and buys second hand goods including a TV set which she mounts on the floor.

To conclude this is just another mills and boons novel. We never expected it to be a literary classic, did we?