Book Review: Adhuri Prem Kahaniya by Santosh Avvannavar

About the book:

Adhuri Prem Kahaniya has been developed while keeping into perspective the lives of 12 individuals. The book sheds light to some aspects of the lives of these individuals in these 25 short stories. This book might turn out to be a great read or ice breaker for people who are stressed out. Most of the stories have a certain romantic and erotic viewpoint and is written mostly for people who are extremely busy with their lives and do not have time for some romance. These people will thoroughly enjoy the book and all of the different aspects that are brought to light by the tumultuous and often funny experiences of these people.

About the author:

Santosh Avvannavar: Santosh started his career as a consultant and Soft
Skills Trainer. He did his college education from NITK, Surathkal. He
functioned as a researcher at University of Eindhoven, University of
Twente and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He was also the
Placement President, while he was working at IISc, Bangalore. He has
over 25 publications of mostly research documents that have found
their place in National & International Journals. Also, he has done 16
conference papers and regularly functions as a writer of different
articles for a national and worldwide daily paper. He is an advisor
for different organizations. Throughout his personal time he composes
his thoughts in a website, namely www.amritafoundation.wordpress.com
and ventures into fiction writing. He delivered seminars and training to more
than 30,000 people in India and abroad over the span of 6 years.

Book Trailer:

                               

 My Review:

The title of the book, the blurb and the quote line, “The weakness of a man is the strength of a woman.”, all of these concoct to lead the prospective reader to a belief that these tales are going to be the heart-rending, poignant tales of suffering for love, pangs of separation, the agony of future, the vagaries of society that hinder the blossoming of love. The content of the book, however, actually is just 12 tales of different people in the form of chapters, which are further sub-divided into sections. This compartmentalization was juvenile enough to make it jacose. Once you have read the entire book, an exercise which can be in fact a challenging task given the grammatical lapses and inaccuraciesand punctuation omissions, apart from the lack of editing and proof-reading conspicuous by their absence, you realise that the author has attempted to bring some points home, the primary of them being the hostility that love still suffers at the hands of society.

 Other aspects include the numerous manifestations of love, the puerile love, the unfulfilled love, a brief fling, et al. The reader is left craving for a single “true love” story, because all these stories, irrespective of how true the love they portray fail to convince the reader of this fact. Again, this might be because a regular reader cannot help donning as a grammar Nazi, but for a casual reader, it might just work fine.

Each chapter is a random strip of a man's life, ambulating from one relationship to another. Perhaps, a narration or two from a girl's perspective could have done wonders to alleviate it. One mystery that the book will help you solve is the facebook relationship status, “It's complicated!”. Disheartening as it sounds, this book even does not make up for its lack of presentation skills in the content. The content has potential, though. The content cries for an editor to recuperate it from the grammatical ravages and lend it a potential place among the easy-to-read bestsellers which the market is witnessing a deluge of.

Judgement(Read: warning) : If you want a casual read, but can refrain from dissecting the book under lexical jargon and linguistic technicalities, only then go for it.

Lines to look out for:

In school, we are taught there is only one 'God' and one religion ‘humanity’. But reality is something else. Did not our parents study from similar school of learning?

Book Review: Tame A Wild Heart by Cynthia Woolf

About the book:

He's not her brother, but Duncan thinks Catherine sure needs one. A woman has no business trying to run a ranch. Not in 1880s Creede, Colorado. Even though she's loved him forever, she swears she doesn't need his help, but in between stampedes, fires and a kidnapping, the ex-bounty hunter and gunslinger becomes determined to do more than protect the ranch. Working together to catch a dangerous outlaw might just be the best thing that ever happened to them both.

About the author:

Cynthia Woolf was born in Denver, Colorado and raised in the mountains west of Golden. She spent her early years running wild around the mountain side with her friends.
Their closest neighbor was one quarter of a mile away, so her little brother was her playmate and her best friend. That fierce friendship lasted until his death in 2006.Cynthia was and is an avid reader. Her mother was a librarian and brought new books home each week. This is where young Cynthia first got the storytelling bug. She wrote her first story at the age of ten. A romance about a little boy she liked at the time.
She worked her way through college and went to work full time straight after graduation and there was little time to write. Then in 1990 she and two friends started a round robin writing a story about pirates. She found that she missed the writing and kept on with other stories. In 1992 she joined Colorado Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America. Unfortunately, the loss of her job demanded the she not renew her memberships and her writing stagnated for many years.

In 2000, she saw an ad in the paper for a writers conference being put on by CRW and decided she'd attend. One of her favorite authors, Catherine Coulter, was the keynote speaker. Cynthia was lucky enough to have a seat at Ms. Coulter's table at the luncheon and after talking with her, decided she needed to get back to her writing. She rejoined both CRW and RWA that day and hasn't looked back.

Cynthia credits her wonderfully supportive husband Jim and the great friends she's made at CRW for saving her sanity and allowing her to explore her creativity.

My Review:

An extraordinary historical setting. Protagonists with a history. Goons and outlaws as villains. An omniscient, loving father. The enigma and mystery about Duncan and Catherine that the commencement of the novel is symptomatic of enthralls the reader at once. Woolf churns out the answers to these mysteries bit-by-bit, thereby serving the reader a scrumptious meal. Duncan, an ex-bounty-hunter despises the profession by saying, “there's no thrill in chase, just long hard days in the saddle going from one rat hole to another. Tracking scum that would kill their own mother for the gold in her teeth.” He clearly has the gift of the gab. 

Woolf has constructed such endearing characters of substance, that makes this work stand out. Her characters are undeniably the show-stealers. Also, it is refreshing to find that given the historic settings, the female protagonist is rebellious and the whole ambience is progressive and not regressive. Catherine is running a ranch and she is defying the norms, but determined as she is, she makes sure she doesn't mess up an iota in an attempt to prove her prowess and capabilities. “Being a woman in a man’s world didn't give her the joy she always thought it would. She wanted more. She wanted it all.” So headstrong is this lady, so fiercely independent and so ferocious with her opinions. But as the story progresses further, the feminist readers are in for a disappointment because at the core of it, the society was regressive, and Cat did end up like any other woman because Duncan would not let her wear the pants in their family. Now, the beauty of the novel rests in the presentation of the plotline, through the various bends, troughs and crests it takes. They get married, they work together, they stick by each other, but the novel explores how they come to love each other and Tame the wild hearts. Explicit Scenes seemed as if perfectly embedded in the matrix of the plot. The epilogue is still sweet, saccharine sweet.

Lines to look out for: Girls are not ornery, we’re smart. You boys are just too dumb to realise that. 

Judgement: If you are looking for a romance set in Historical background with a difference,go grab a copy!

I thank the author for providing me with a review copy!