By Jyoti Arora. Grade: B
Lemon Girl
“‘It’s all your fault.’ Mere words these are. But words can possess a shadow invincible enough to rob even a soul of its eternity.” In a society that finds it easier to mark sins of a victim than the culprit, Nirvi is a young girl punishing herself for the faults she did not do and avenging her hurts by defeating her own truth. She is scared of her future, and ashamed of her past. She is failing herself, and knows it. She has had a long line of boyfriends, and hated them all. She detests the guy she is living with, runs away from the one she loves , and seduces the one who can never love her. When Arsh first sees Nirvi, she’s a free and frank girl in whose eyes sparkle the lemony zest of life. The next time he sees her, she is a voiceless doll draped in clothes that cover her body less and shroud her soul more. And Arsh can’t rest till he finds out what made Nirvi give up her own real self. Nirvi knows she is dragging herself on a path from which there can be no recovery. Can her spirit survive the treacherous downfall? Or is the pull of fear and push of desperation just too strong to withstand for a girl who believes she has “nowhere else to go” but down. “When it’s time for you to fall in love, even a lemon can become the cause of it,” says Arsh. But can love survive, when even the self love dies? Can love survive when respect is no more? Does true love have the power to revive a dying soul? Find out in the pages of this brilliantly woven, intense, heart-warming and thought-provoking saga of RISING IN LOVE…
After I read the blurb I thought this book to be an interesting read but sadly I was wrong. Rather it turned out to be another failed attempt to express a possibly attention-grabbing plot. The gist of the story was right, it’s just that the way it was laid out was rather irritating and not fresh.
The writer tries to build suspense in the worst possible way – taking refuge under pronouns to keep the reader glued. However, it really is obvious what the apparent twist in the story is supposed to be. Both Nirvi and Arsh meet for about a minute in the supermarket when they were young and while Arsh clings onto the image of the most extraordinary girl he has met in his heart, while Nirvi on the the other hand is disturbed by the occurrences of what had followed.
The book revolves around Nirvi who was once a bubbly girl that Arsh saw in the supermarket. Fast forward five years and he is still looking for her and when he finally meets her again, he tries to push his way into her life. What follows is a long, long, long turn of events.
All instances from the past are explained with exaggeration.
And then my mother found for me a nice guy. Nice guy for a girl she herself had blamed for wanting in all that was nice and decent. Nice guy for a girl for the girl who aimed at dating every guy of her acquaintance. Nice guy for a girl whose favourite challenge had been to steal the love of her own best friend.
All chapters start with unwanted and unnecessary philosophical statements that fall flat.
A mistake is an opportunity you give to life to teach you a lesson. And when even human teachers don’t give lessons for free, life certainly won’t.
The various characters act in the book is something which seems unreal. While some characters are just too desperate, others are shrewd and some take orders from others when it is clearly undesired. There is so so so much overdone drama (and my so’s are meant to highlight that in a punny manner).
He was the door out of one cage. Didn’t know then that it led into another one, just as crushing and one from which I couldn’t even wish an escape. Escape needed a destination more beckoning.
There was fire in the sky. There was fire in my heart. But, still all was drowned in darkness. Utter darkness. But there is nothing so pure as darkness. And in this purity no disguise is required.
Finally (finally!) the book ends with a truly Bollywood climax. I think this is where Jyoti Arora went wrong with her last book as well, in Dream’s Sake. She tried to incorporate too many lessons, overdid her characters’ bravery, and plain and simple, couldn’t pull off the grand plot where two ordinary but endearing characters fight a great uphill battle with unflinching bravery and inspire the reader to do the same.
