Book Review: The Other Side by Faraaz Kazi, Vivek Banerjee

About the book:
A slow rasping sound made me turn. I jumped back, the cell phone leaving my hands and smashing against the concrete floor. Someone was seated on the chair, rocking back and forth. Through the fallen light, I could see those hands placed on the arms of the chair, two gruesome wrinkled limbs with ugly boils plastered over the black skin. The red bangles on its wrists shone in my eyes, momentarily blinding me. That thing and I call it a thing because I could sense it wasnt human as no human could have such a hideous form, as vile an existence as the one seated opposite to my horrified self.

From a honeymoon in the hill that goes horribly wrong to an obsessed lover who wants his first love in life and in death; From a mentally deranged man who collects body parts of various women to stitch together his dream girl to a skeptic who enters a mansion of horrors to win a bet and much more, this book is filled with scenarios that are guaranteed to give you goosebumps and sleepless nights.
The Other Side is a collection of thirteen tales of the paranormal; a world that our eyes refuse to see, our ears deny hearing and our senses ignore the feel of. This is a book for someone who is brave enough to take up this invitation to journey through uncharted waters along with the authors, who were inspired by some bizarre experiences to pen down this work where the lines of reality have been blurred by the footsteps of imagination.

Each story takes you on a tour de force of unadulterated horror and draws upon the deepest fear in the human mind- the fear of the Unknown! 

Book Trailer: 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UlAPULBZvY
 

About the author:

A pediatrician by profession, Vivek Banerjee is an author by accident.He lives in Saharanpur with his parents, obstetrician wife and two children. The pressures of his profession leave him with little leisure but he still finds time for his varied interests. An avid traveller, he has covered the length and breadth of the country in real life and the rest of the world in his imagination. A voracious reader, music lover, self-confessed geek and an amateur ornithologist, he would rather walk the road less travelled, given the time and opportunity. A Bengali by birth, he has grown up in various towns of North India and studied in many different schools and colleges. He started writing on Rediff blogs where he is known as Ben and went on to write his debut novel THE LONG ROAD.
He has also been published by Westland in 'Chicken Soup for Indian Doctors Soul', Grapevine India in 'Shades of Love' and APK Publishers in 'Shades of Black'.
He won an all India short story competition for his story 'The hunter'which was published in 'Kaleidoscope' by Parlance publishers.
An anthology of stories about the paranormal, 'The Other Side', co-authored with Faraaz Kazi is a recent offering. He is also a part of 'Carnival' by Litizen.com

The winner of the 2013 National Debut Youth Fiction Award and also the recipient of the YCOF National Excellence award in Creative Writing apart from being the first Indian author to win the coveted ‘Best Debut (Romance)’ title at the international Goodreads choice awards, Faraaz Kazi has been tagged as the 'Nicholas Sparks of India’ by many and is rated amongst the top male romance writers in the country.
A certified soft-skills trainer and a three-time post grad, Kazi is the Founder and CEO of DigiImprint Solutions, India's first exclusive promotional agency for authors and artists that recently forayed into handling corporate brands. He also consults for a few public relations firms and publishing houses. Felicitated by numerous institutes, bodies and organizations alike, Kazi is a well-known name in the social media and literary fraternity. He is fondly referred to as 'The Young Marketer' and operates a revolutionary blog with the same name and writes for major media houses.

Kazi is a fellow member of the esteemed 'Film Writers Association of India.' Truly Madly Deeply, his debut mainstream romance novel is the only Indian book to have seven category nominations in the Goodreads annual readers' choice awards and is also the only Indian book in the 'Top 100 YA Global Fiction' list. Kazi is a voracious reader and counts singing as his second love. 


My Review:

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. The book begins with these words of Stephen king, and one may as well think that this is yet another attempt at scaring the reader out of his wits. But the truth is, it is not just another book. This one really does that. After R.L. Stine's writing, if anything can give goosebumps, it is this collection of horror stories. Each of the stories would individually make full-fledged horror-thriller movies that can make you lose your sleep. The authors have really great insight as to the fear of the unknown. After reading each story, the reader is able to envisage an other side, travel to it, and then coming to terms with reality becomes a raw deal. The urban, educated masses are skeptic and rational when it comes to explaining these events, but this book is here to reaffirm the belief that indeed there is 'the other side' and that some inexplicable occurrences best be explained by the existence of the other side only. In this spooky collection, where one story surpasses another in its eerie, spine-chilling content.

If you consider yourself brave, take this challenge of not being chicken-hearted while reading this book in entirety, fully engrossed in the world the doors of which it opens for you. The descriptions make it hard not to believe what happened and your reason and rationality cannot explain it. This book will make the belief in supernatural immortal.

 Unexpected, raw, bone-chilling horror awaits you. For days now, I am still scared at the thought of waking up in the wee hours of night. Reading it at night before going to bed was a sheer underestimation of the horrifying stories that I read. The goosebumps haven't subsided yet.

Judgement:

Macabre characters, eerie events, uncanny places, supernatural beliefs, horrible scenarios left unexplained, sinister ramifications....interesting? Go grab you copy!

Best lines: 

ghosts, evil spirits are a by-products of a fanciful imagination. These are cooked up tales to usurp the property in the long run.

"This book review is a part of The Readers Cosmos Book Review Program. To get free books log on to thereaderscosmos.blogspot.com"