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Friday 22 June 2018

A Cage of Desires - Book Review


Shuchi Singh Kalra’s A Cage of Desires is an offspring of Shashi Deshpande’s marriage to Mills & Boons. Renu is a housewife trapped in a loveless marriage. One day a young dashing tenant enters her house and her life is turned upside down. She finds all the love that was missing from her life standing at the threshold of her gate. Will she step out and embrace it? To know answers to these questions you will have to read Shuchi Singh Kalra’s A Cage of Desires.

The book underlines that women, like men, are sexual beings too. They too have desires of their own. At the same time it shows the perils of seeking sex outside the marriage. The characters are real, laced with a tinge of fantasy which all us crave for. The last quarter of the book is full of twists and turns. They are entertaining for sure. But they rob the story from the realistic plane in which the other part is set. The author succeeds in riveting the readers to their seats. The book contains some beautiful lines. I reproduce them.

That’s the thing about truth – it doesn’t flinch, it doesn’t falter, it sears and burns. And the truth singed her heart, scarring it in places she never even realized existed.

Truth and lies are like oil and water. You can shake them up all you want, but they will never mix.

There’s a kind of love that makes you go down on one knee, and there’s the kind that brings you down on both. You don’t need the latter, because no matter what you do, you cannot make anyone love you back.

I may push you off the cliff but I’ll still break your fall because I may have the strength but I do not have the heart to destroy you.

While Mills & Boons heroines are spineless bimbettes, Renu is a brave woman, but not a super-heroine. She is some one like all of us, with her own positives and weaknesses. What I didn’t like about the book is too much of sex scenes. Yet I enjoyed A Cage of Desires. Shuchi you have earned an admirer.

Monday 11 June 2018

Trust Me Not - Book Review

Trust Me Not by Ankita Verma Datta is the story of Reeva Rai. Reeva is the rising star in the corporate industry. She has a boy friend who is the most eligible bachelor in the country. But then she is faced with a dilemma. Beneath the corporate belly lies tale of exploitation. Governments are managed, poor are uprooted and rendered homeless. Will Reeva survive this cut throat industry? To know this you will have to read Trust Me Not by Ankita Verma Dutta.

The problem with Trust Me Not is that its cover and blurb promise it to be a thriller, but the first half of the book reads like a mills & boons novel. The language is good and error free. The novel shines in the second half, but fails miserably to hook the reader in the first, the way any good thriller should. If you don’t Trust Me Not, enter at your own risk.