Book Stop Corner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Why are you the way you are?
asks Alicia Lynn Wilde to one of her prospect for the Elite Two Meet's members club, in the book, But I Love You written by Peter Rosch. Elite Two Meet, Alicia's brainchild, is a club of elite and super-rich, single men and women, and is built up on delusional beliefs and lies.

But I Love You is a dark love-story, although it was a one-sided love-affair, more of an obsession and possession over someone. The underlying story is a sweet love-story, but since, it's a one-sided affair, it turns quite bloody at the end.

“If you're that obsessed with someone, why would you kill her?
Humans are full of contradictions.”
----Ai Yazawa, a Japanese Magna author
Because finally when you realize that you can't possess that person's heart, who you love so deeply, then you feel like killing them and taking their souls out of them, and maybe that's a contradiction.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A funny quote about being the "IT" Party Girl:
Working out is my partying
Protein shakes are my beer
Pre-workouts are my shots
The pump is my buzz
And the pain the next morning
Is my
Hangover

Is true that life is damn hard for any rootless, party girl who doesn't give a shit about anything in the world and is it really shameful to aim for nice little domestic life with a sweet-old husband?

Jenny Hannigan is the definition of a true party girl- dinners means no home-cook meals, party means getting terribly hung-over and love means breaking millions of hearts. But after a long time, Jenny is in love and is keeping the identity of her soul mate so close to herself! But what happens if the frenemy gets married before the most happening girl of college? Well Jenny's story starts right in the middle of a marriage where people are sugar-mouthing the newlyweds whereas Jenny is sulking and hating the whole environment sitting in a corner.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thomas Eugene Robbins, an American author has quoted about killing as:

“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”

Elizabeth Crook, another American author has penned down her new novel, Monday, Monday based on shooting in University of Texas on 1st August, 1966, and it happen to be the first brutal shooting incident in America's history.



As per Wikipedia, Charles Joseph Whitman, an ex- US Marine, killed 16 people and wounded 32 others in a spree shooting in Austin, Texas on the University of Texas at Austin campus in and around the Tower on the afternoon of August 1, 1966.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


You rarely come across those authors who have the ability to pull you into his/her story so easily and blend us among one of his/her characters so casually. Kerry Hudson is definitely one such author who knows how to make her readers believe that her naive protagonist who is a full-grown adult woman having a dream and goal of her own, has easily been sweet-talked to work in the flesh-trade in London. I believed it and I loved the way Kerry Hudson has put the spotlight into the situation, well, it's easily evident that she has that power and talent to make her readers look into the deepest bottom of the Devil's Sinkhole.

Kerry Hudson's new book, Thirst is a heart-touching love-story set-up amidst of the dark and dangerous flesh-trade of immigrants at Clapham in London to the behind the windows of the posh stores located in the Bond Street of London. And an intelligent author like Kerry Hudson, demands a lot of your attention focused in to the book. Well it was not hard to blend into the story and but it requires quite a lot of effort to read the words!

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


We often catch ourselves day-dreaming of that idyllic life up in some quiet countryside, spending our days either by farming in the gardens or reading by the brook- an ideal getaway away from the bustling of the city life! An English author, named, Rosy Thornton, has once again allowed us to think about our guilty pleasure of getting away from our bustling life once and for all. The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton is a poignant combination of happy solitude away in some French countryside up in the mountains to sad, and monotonous life away in England. Also Thornton's magnificent tapestry of silk and love have managed to spin this tale into something rich and highly remarkable.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald's remarkable words:

“A love affair is like a short story--it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning was easy, the middle might drag, invaded by commonplace, but the end, instead of being decisive and well knit with that element of revelatory surprise as a well-written story should be, it usually dissipated in a succession of messy and humiliating anticlimaxes.”

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's affair was one of the world’s most notorious and most talked about affair in its history. We fell with them, we cried with them, we resented with them, we hated with them, we envied with them, we burned with jealousy with them, we felt everything whatever La Taylor and Richard was feeling, because their affair was strikingly caught behind every paparazzi’s lenses to present to the world and theirs was the affair which shake each and everyone in this planet.

Gill Paul, an English historical fiction writer, has penned her new novel, The Affair based on real-life incidents and events during the year 1963 on the very sets of Cleopatra movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, in Rome. It's not only a love story, but also involves around a dark-mystery and the underworld of Italian drug-mafias.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Jeffrey Stepakoff, an American television writer, producer, and author, has captured the definition of any particular “scent" in his remarkable words, as;

“A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotion.”

Julie Cohen, the English author has crafted a beautiful tale about scents and fragrances triggering any particular memory in her new novel, Where Love Lies. I'm pretty sure that while reading the book, you too are going to get engulfed by the beauty of this tale and also get lost in the beautiful fragrance underlying in this tale.

Synopsis:
Felicity, a children's book author, is married to her husband, Quinn for just a year and within her 1 year of marriage, Felicity's mind remains always clouded by doubt and uncertainty about Quinn, love and marriage. Quinn wants Felicity to try for a baby, but her mind is clogged with her book's protagonist's next adventure and with the idea of love. But suddenly, Felicity and only Felicity can smell the fragrance of frangipani flowers wherever she went, but when she consulted her GP, he confirms it to be due to her migraine pains and that particular smell is related to a man that Felicity once loved almost 10 years ago. As Felicity falls one more for that beautiful man from her past, her marriage to Quinn seems so bleak and uncertain. Will Felicity hold onto the smell of frangipani flowers? Will Felicity come to term with a simple smell that's almost haunting her marriage?

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Cheryl Rae Tiegs, an American model, actress, designer, author, and entrepreneur, has once said,
"But when I would see the surrogate, my first instinct, my first reaction would be jealousy, because she was doing what I wanted to do."

Dear Thing by Julie Cohen, is a tale about a mother who no longer wants to be a mother and another mother who is desperately trying to be a 'mother' for the first time. Their paths cross when one becomes the surrogate of the other, owing to the fact that, they both loved the same man.

An enticing tale about love, trust, motherhood, and the very less discussed topics of these times- surrogacy! When couples, who are trying to be parents for the first time, fail in IVF methods and they don't want to go through all those hectic and long procedures of adoption, then they opt the surrogacy option, i.e. taking the help of another women's womb to reproduce your own flesh and blood and with the help of artificial insemination, the sperms and eggs of the wanna-be parents couples, are planted on that other woman's womb.

Julie Cohen, the author, has given us a thorough insight into the world of surrogate mothers, and how they try to not to get attached with the baby and in order of not getting way too attached with the baby, they sometimes start addressing the baby as 'Thing' and how strongly they balance their own emotions with that of the baby's parents.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Venice, Tuscany, Cagliari, Tyrrhenian sea, and all that gorgeous little islands of Italy, will completely wrap you up in its aura and beauty and its serenity, in the book called, The Echoes of Love by Hannah Fielding, a French author. The Echoes of Love, will echo that kind of love which is dark, brooding, yet pure and unbreakable!!

Synopsis:
Venetia Aston-Montagu, an English woman, who was named after her Godmother's love for Venice and surprisingly, Venetia, ended up living in Venice, pursuing her dream of restoring delicate historical art pieces. Venetia is a delicate and sensitive woman, who have closed the windows of her heart tightly years ago, due to her broken heart and now she is scared of meeting men and getting too serious with them, because, that might again break her heart.

Paolo Barone, a not-so-handsome, but a very brooding man, who is his is lat 30s. He has quite a reputation as a incantatore di donne, womanizer. He too had lost his heart, mind and soul to the love of his life, in an accident. But when he woke up from his coma, he lost his wife and all her memories, from his heart as well as from his mind. So he lived his life without attaching any strings to his heart and home.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After reading Under the Jewelled Sky by Alison McQueen, I can't stop myself from quoting Rumi, the Persian poet's remarkable words,

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

If I've to express the book, Under the Jewelled Sky in few short words, then I would say:
Painful, raw and deeply moving!


Synopsis:
Let's move back to the time when India has got the power to overthrow the highly acclaimed British Empire from their land- the year is 1947! A sweet, innocent and pure love story blossoms between an English girl and an Indian servant boy inside a hugely lavish palace in Jaipur on the very day on India's independence.
Fast forward to 10years later, when we see that English girl Sophie getting married to a diplomat and settling back in New Delhi- the country which makes her heart skip a beat, to a country where she hid all her sweet memories in her closet of past dreams and hopes. Sophie's doctor father lives in Ooty and knows all about her fragile heart, but will she be able to keep her heart in place to make it work with her new husband? Has Sophie's heart stopped aching from the previous pain? Will the past haunt her upon her arrival to the country which made her feel the passion of a first love?

The City of Palaces by Sujata Massey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I always feel so ecstatic and proud whenever I get to read books about my own old city- Kolkata-a city where I was born, a city which I call 'Home'. Well I was born in Calcutta and grew up in Kolkata. The Nawabs and the British coined Calcutta as "The City of Palaces". But this proverb changed during the reign of Queen Victoria, and thus Calcutta changed to the sprawling, bustling capital of India. Dennison Berwick has quoted in his book, A Walk along the Ganges:

"There is poverty; there is squalor in so many places in our country (India). It is our disgrace. At least in Calcutta we have also culture and poetry."

And as Dominique Lapierre, the author of the book City of Joy has quoted:

"Calcutta produced more writers than Paris and Rome combined, more literary reviews than London and New York, more cinemas than New Delhi, and more publishers than the rest of the country."

I found another great author named Sujata Massey, a British author having Bengali roots, and when I stumbled upon her book named The City o Palaces, I never imagined that book will be so overwhelming and remarkable. I can bet that people of my city will go crazy over this book. Especially, given the fact that still to this day, Bengalis love to spin the tale of their old Calcutta during the British era to their grandsons and daughters. Being a Bengali, I had also the privilege to inherit such tales about the British era from my grandparents. And reading this book, I felt nostalgic, about all those old stories that my grandparents used to share with me.

I cannot thank enough to Penguin India and especially the author, Sujata Massey, for giving me this golden opportunity to read and review her new novel, The City of Palaces.

This book is about a journey of a young girl to her womanhood which is so profound and striking that it's going to melt your heart and soul and will make your heart fall badly for the city as well as for this young woman.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The true exotic experience can one gather in his lifetime is from only one land in our world, that is, Myanmar in Burma. Rudyard Kipling has once captured the beauty and exotic-ness of Burma in his famous quote:

"This is Burma and it is unlike any land you know about."

An English author, named, Rosanna Ley, living in West Dorset, have also strikingly captured the beauty and the aura of Burma in her enthralling novel, Return to Mandalay. From the name itself, the book sounds so alluring and with its phantasmagorical cover image, it makes the book more and more beautiful.

Synopsis:
Eva, an English living by the bay of West Dorset, has grown up fantasizing on her grandfather's fascinating tales from his younger days in Mandalay. This Eva is all grown-up now, working as an antique dealer in an emporium. Soon her dream of visiting the exotic lands of Burma comes true and in a fleet second she says "yes" to her business trip to Mandalay. But little did she know that her grandfather beheld a great secret to the mysterious land and an extrinsic treasure belonging to the history of Burma. And thus we step into The Golden Land rich with heritage and natural resources, where Eva embarks upon a journey to relive her grandfather's past with her own eyes and by returning the treasure- a chinthe of a lion with "red glowing" eyes, to its rightful owner. Eva finds solace and her heart's desire in the Land of Gems where she not only dons the hat of a master sleuth but also vows to restore the balance in nature by safe-guarding the history of Burma. But will she succeed in doing what she wanted? And will her heart learn to trust again? Read this novel for sure to taste the exotic-ness not only in your mind but also with your senses.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Malayan Emergency, the year is 1955, which is when the Malayan guerrilla war was being fought for an Anti-British government in Malaya. The period of Insurgency has occurred just after the Japanese troops left the country followed by Malayan economic disruption. The war is at its full form, and the red-headed Europeans were treated with disrespect.

A woman named Lydia Cartwright who found herself searching for her two young daughters amidst of deadly war and terrorism, murder, lies, and deceit. A wild goose chase for a ray of hope in the Malayan jungles, Lydia's life had never had been so terrorising and so on the edge. A mother's painful journey of searching her daughters among pain and bloodshed and uncovering so many hidden puzzle pieces , mysteries and secrets, in the way letting her guard down for more than one time.

The Separation by Dinah Jefferies is an enriching and soul-touching story that is bound to be etched on to your hearts for a very long time.

Synopsis:
On the opening scene of the book, we see that Emma is playing with her younger sister, Fleur on their Malayan country home and then all of a sudden, their dad, Alec is asking them to pack off all their belongings hastily and all the while, Emma was asking what about their mother, Lydia, will she come with them, how will she know that they have left the house, worrying badly about her. When Lydia returns to the empty house, she meets Maznan, a young half-Chinese boy, who has to be rescued to be taken back into the jungle to his mother. And thus Lydia embarks upon a journey to save another mother's child and of her own daughters. From terrorist attacks to ambush to getting lost in a deep dark jungle which leads to uncertainty, how much pain can a mother take for the sake of her own daughters?