Review: Fire Under Ash

BY IN B+, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET

By Saskya Jain. Grade: B+

Fire Under Ash

When Ashwin, a wealthy Delhi boy, meets Lallan, a struggling student from Patna looking to make his fortune, their friendship, with their mutual love for the almond-eyed Mallika, seems to transcend the fault lines of class and privilege. But one night at a party, a fateful incident leads their worlds to unravel with consequences that change both their lives forever, and expose the deep turmoil inherent in the frenetic energy of the new, aspiring India. An audacious debut, Fire Under Ash marks the debut of Indian fiction’s latest star who takes a coruscating look at Delhi’s beauty and brutality, writing the city as we’ve never read it before.

Since the blurb has its limitations, we’ll take a look at the plot in greater detail.… Continue Reading?

Review: I.T. Hurts

BY IN A, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET

By Subhasis Das and Mahi Singla. Grade: A

Writing is by no mean an easy task. Some books click with the readers, whereas some don’t. With the sudden surge of young new – age writers in the last few years, readers are spoilt with choices. Competition has reached an altogether different level, with every writer aiming to find a place among the masses. Light fictions dealing with campus and office romances are often criticised by the literary pundits, but then, at times they do help us when we are in need of a quick bite.

Subhasis Das and Mahi Singla, bestselling authors of ‘Mom Says No Girlfriend’ and ’12 Hours’ respectively, collaborate to come up with ‘I.T.Hurts’, and picking up this book would definitely not hurt you.… Continue Reading?

Review: Predator

BY Guest Reviewer IN A, Women's Fiction, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET

By Kartik Iyengar. Grade: A

Reviewed by Swati Sharma

When most of our time is spent engrossed in the online world, do we really realize the extent of risks involved?  Does the fact that we are accessing it from the safe harbors of our homes or offices really protect us from the dangers lurking on the other side of the screen?  Can we really picture the actual malice prevailing? Kartik Iyengar’s “Predator” is a book which very adeptly answers all these questions about the online world. It is a story which takes you into the darkest and nastiest pits of the online territory.  It shows how the smartest of people can naively fall prey to the vicious online predators.

Predator by Kartik Iyengar

It was the perfect evening.

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Review: Love Lasts Forever…Only if You Don’t Marry Your Love

BY Riya IN C, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET

By Vikrant Khanna. Grade: C

There are many kinds of readers. You have hard-core bibliophiles who frown at anything less than Kafka. A step lower we have bookaholics who devour good books regardless of genre or nationality, love authors like John Green and Frederick Forsyth and occasionally dabble in some high-brow reading. On the bottom rung you have pseudo-lovers who call themselves book addicts because they once read Kite Runner and now read Chetan Bhagat and Durjoy Datta in the metro. Cynical yes, but I think we all start from the bottom rung and eventually read our way to the top one. In this evolution, I sit in the middle.

I don’t usually read Indian writers – an oft repeated clichéd criticism, but I still don’t like the inherent risk involved – and was going to give this one a skip.… Continue Reading?

Review: And We Remained

BY Aastha IN Ali Junaid, B+, Coming-of-Age, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET Ali Junaid

By Ali Junaid. Grade B+

The IIT-IIM alumini have had their fair share of reminicising over college life, in forms of various novels by newbies and veterans alike. That has spawned a whole generation of other (mainly engineering) graduates that want their story to be podcasted to the world, which means that today anyone with a computer and Microsoft Word can become an author. This means that we as readers have to wade through a murky pool of bad grammar and have to brave all the sloppy story-telling to come across one engaging and absorbing piece of writing.

And We Remained

It is Bangalore in the late 1990’s. There are tremendous socio-economic and cultural transformations taking place as a result of liberalization.

… Continue Reading?

Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

BY Vanathi IN A, General Fiction, John Boyne, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET John Boyne

 By John Boyne. Grade A

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance.
But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences

As my mood for Holocaust fiction didn’t seem to end, I picked this book up which has been long waiting to be read in my ‘To-Read’ list.… Continue Reading?

Review: The Escaped Moments

BY Aparna Nagraj IN A, Young-Adult 7 COMMENTS Jaasindah R Mir

By Jaasindah R Mir. Grade: A.

Aatirah Rohail Kazi, a fifteen-year-old small town girl of Kashmir, has only seen the grey shades of childhood since her mother died. There are a lot of things Aatirah hates about her life: her cruel step-mother, her dad and her moronic step brother.

For the past five years Aatirah has hidden her troubles from everyone. It’s only when she finds Mysha at a social networking site, she confides into her. But now things are getting complicated: Mysha wants Aatirah to solve a complex love triangle between Mysha, Sahir and Tamanna. To top it all off, Aatirah has taken to smoking out of stress.

Would Aatirah be successful at grabbing the freedom of her heart by opening up to a distant person or does the desire of having a friend to confide into have a bigger price to pay?

… Continue Reading?

Review: The Storm in My Mind…

BY Titiksha Jindal IN D, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET Ayaan Basu, Indian author

By Ayaan Basu. Grade D

The saying “do not judge a book by its cover” holds true for this book. And no, I’m not saying that in a positive way. When I read the title and the blurb, I thought I was in for a wonderful ride.  I started reading this book with the hope that it would be something different, inspiring of sorts. But sadly, it turned out to be yet another love story of a boy in Kolkata.

The Storm In My Mind

The Storm in my Mind… is a collective narrative of events, habits, stereotypes and idiosyncrasies revolving around the contemporary society of Kolkata. It is a story of love as much as it is of hatred, passion, friendship, trust, misunderstandings, nostalgia and love for a city.

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Review: Love and Lokpal

BY IN A, Contemporary Romance, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET Pooja Wanpal

By Pooja Wanpal. Grade A

It’s heartening to see a young author come out with a debut, so polished and neat, that you feel like being a part of that book, reverberating with the words that are pronounced so brightly, on the backdrop of a national movement that in ways more than one proved to be a renaissance in the history of modern India. You feel the tinge of excitement that tickles in your abdomen, that brushes along with the awareness you possess, culminating in a sense of belonging with the penned down words. ‘

Love and Lokpal

Love and Lokpal stays true to its name, and does full justice on both the fronts – Love as well as Lokpal.

Shlok Kulkarni, an architect by day and an Assassin’s creed junkie by night is being bombarded with eligible girls by his matchmaking mama.

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Review: Life’s Like That

BY IN D, Young-Adult NO COMMENTS YET Indian author, Prashant Shrivastava

By Prashant Shrivastava. Grade D.

‘Life’s Like That’ is set in the beautiful city of Udaipur. However, is that enough to salvage a story that hardly cares to have a meaningful plot? The cover is neat, enticing you to go through the blurb, which again showcases this book as a tale of friendship, jealousy, love and betrayal. I don’t know how much a reader could relate with the first three emotions. However, when it comes to betrayal, I truly felt thus after reading this book. Why, just why couldn’t the author devote more time, and effort, which in turn would have benefitted this story a great deal?

Set in the beautiful city of Udaipur, this love story is filled with everything, jealousy, one sided love and betrayal.

… Continue Reading?