About the book:
My Happily Forever is a romantic fiction, portraying the life of the beautiful and talented Pia Sharma who has only two things on her to do list before turning thirty. One - manage her own team at JB Standards, a private banking firm in New York City. Two - find, fall in love and marry her own Mr Darcy, her knight in shining armour who would think that her crazy family is adorable. Alas! She is stuck with a boss from hell who has it in for her. Working donkey hours makes it impossible for her to have social life. And Mr Darcy never attends the scary weekend svayamvars her meddlesome relatives set up.
In despair, Pia undertakes a secret mission. With a bartender as her Fairy Godmother and her eccentric, gossip loving BFFs for guides, she arms herself with the top ten dating books in an effort to master the law of attraction. But when her efforts to find her Prince Charming yield some unexpected results, her entire life is thrown upside down.
To what lengths will she go to find her Mr Right? Does Pia have what it takes to fight for her happily ever after?
Paperback 240 pages
Published 2013 by Grapevine
My Review:
Grapevine India has been publishing some real heart-rendering chick=lit stuff. This one is an exception in that it is an episodic novel, dealing with a girl's life. First and foremost I commend the authors, like quite, for their portrayal of the protagonist Pia and her family: an unorthodox father, a concerned-about-daughter mother, the dire matrimonial attempts, relatives who would stuff you before they slaughter you, a string of prospective grooms who somehow always manage to let you down. this is such a humorous account of the ordeal (no exaggeration intended) that Pia's facing.
The opening sentence itself lends hilarity to the whole task of reading. the humour and puns, which the novel is so replete with, are so addictive that you almost succumb to it and find yourself in the place of Pia, feeling a surge of the same emotions as her, and with the same intensity. So, while the girls reading this book can relate to her in entirety, they might as well start laughing at their own status quo.
This book is a must read for all Indian girls especially, living here and abroad, whether from orthodox or unorthodox families, united by a common problem: the societal (read:baseless) pressure to "settle down".
At another level, the novel is a critical account of the status of single hood in our society: it is still deprecated and despised as if a curse. Girls like Pia are compelled to find their "happily forever" and then this already fantastical notion of Happily-ever-after is peppered with the yearning for a Mr. Right, prince Charming, and other abhorrent names you might give straight out of some Bollywood movie.
And then, more than anything else, it is a contemporary story, so it also depicts the professional roadblocks faced by the girl. There are relatives more desperate than herself. People just don't seem to understand that it is a decision of a lifetime, that it is not undone casually, that it remains forever,....you get the drift.
If I had to choose the best part of the whole story, it is undoubtedly going to be the character etching. The authors have had some real skill in creating hilarious, eccentric, despicable, endearing characters, all at once.
BFFs who laugh hysterically while watching movies, who keep pulling your leg when you equip yourselves with books on dating, but nevertheless rescuing you from the abyss of the singlehood-syndrome!
The relatives, who butcher you every weekend in the guise of your well-wisher.
the parents, who've been pestered enough by relatives to believe that their daughter has to get married, no alternatives, no questions asked!
A string of foolish boys: some desperate to live-in, some to conceal their sexuality. A boss who could not have been more hateful, whose absence ironically augments work productivity.
So, if you are in for a light read, which you can relate to, go treat yourself NOW!
In fact, this is a must-read book for every girl out there....
