Review: Incidentals

Author: Vinayak Pattar.

Genre: Short Stories. 

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍬

Blurb:

Just like unison of a male and female giving rise to a new generation, two rivers meet at a fictitious village called Koodala. Set in this Koodala, Incidentals is a collection of 17 short stories that touch your chords of nostalgia, love, relationship, humor, childhood, adventure, culture, and superstitions. Overall, each story reminds us of incidents that most of us experienced, in one or the other form, during the course of our lives.

Cover Review:

The cover is beautiful. I love its simplicity. 

Book Review:

Incidentals was a collection of 17 quirky short stories set in the fictional town of Koondla. Some of the stories were funny, some ironic and some were too short to make much sense.

I liked most of the stories, but there were a few that read more like musings than stories, like that last one about death. 

The book, in my opinion, was a good attempt by the author, but it needed a bit more work to really stand out. There were instances where words were used out of context or where tenses kept changing with each paragraph. 

Overall, it needs a bit of work, but it could be a superb collection with some editing and TLC.

Add To Goodreads .

Buy Incidentals now:

Amazon India .

Review: Catch Me If You Can

Author: Rafaa Dalvi.

Genre: Comedy, Short Story.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍫

Blurb:

What happens when the world's best detective realizes that his prodigy has become a wanted global con artist? Prepare for a wild cat-and-mouse chase around the world.

Cover Review:

The cover is okay, a bit intriguing, simple and nice.

Book Review:

This is going to be a short review since the book itself is just 16 pages long.

Catch Me If You Can was funny, not the kind that makes you roll on the floor laughing, but the kind that makes you giggle in awkward places (like public transport?)

It was a short read, as I said earlier, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I read it over tea, and it was the best way to read it, I believe. I finished the book faster than I finished my tea 😂

Overall, Catch Me If You Can is a short, fun read and I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Add To Goodreads.

Buy Catch Me If You Can Now:

Amazon India | Amazon US

Review: The Boy

Author: Nrupal Das.

Genre: Short Story, General Fiction.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍬

Blurb:

Story of a boy who went to play his usual tennis ball cricket in a nearby field. Nothing was unusual that day. Until in the evening when the boy does not return. and a friend tells her mom that the boy never went to play that day.

A frantic search begins with the neighbours and the boy’s friends pulling in all their resources. Does the boy return? Where did he go? Where was he taken? What happens at the end?

Cover Review:

The cover is dark and beautiful. The shining stars only add to the book's allure. 

Book Review:

The boy was a simple story about a simple boy who loved his parents. It is a story of faith and love. 

The story was well written, with an interesting, full of action storyline. The one thing that irritated me the most was how lengthy the descriptions were. I mean, I'd rather read a shorter version with appropriate descriptions than slog through five pages comprising merely of descriptions. 

It was a short, quick read and I had fun reading it.

All in all, The Boy was a short read with well-crafted characters and a good storyline.

Add To Goodreads.

Buy The Boy now:

Amazon India. (Currently at Rs. 9 only!)

(This post contains an affiliate link!)

Review: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Author: Stephenie Meyer.

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Young Adult, Short Story.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫

Blurb:

Bree Tanner can barely remember life before she had uncannily powerful senses, superhuman reflexes, and unstoppable physical strength. Life before she had a relentless thirst for blood...life before she became a vampire.

All Bree knows is that living with her fellow newborns has few certainties and even fewer rules: watch your back, don't draw attention to yourself, and above all, make it home by sunrise or die. What she doesn't know: her time as an immortal is quickly running out.

Then Bree finds an unexpected friend in Diego, a newborn just as curious as Bree about their mysterious creator, whom they only know as her. As they come to realize that the newborns are pawns in a game larger than anything they could have imagined, Bree and Diego must choose sides and decide whom to trust. But when everything you know about vampires is based on a lie, how do you find the truth?

Cover Review:

Just like all the other Twilight series' book covers, Bree Tanner too features a cover with the red-black-white theme. The hourglass denotes Bree's time, that is running out. I love how meaningful Twilight's covers are!

Book Review:

This review may be a little biased because I love the Twilight Saga. I read the series for the first time when I was 15. I'm 19 now, and currently listening to the Twilight audiobook as my very own lullaby! Twilight was the second series I ever read, after Harry Potter, and therefore, it has always stayed a favourite of mine. 

It took me four years to finally get my hands on this book. I hadn't actually expected a whole story in here. I'd expected it'd be a bunch of events from Bree's life. But when has Stephenie Meyer ever written what I expected? As always, she was way ahead of my expectations. 

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, though a short story, was in itself a complete story. It had well developed characters, a flawless storyline and the Meyer flair. 

I'm trying my best to sound professional here but I might as well be fangirling because this review does not sound professional at all! 

All in all, Bree Tanner was a short, beautiful and heartbreaking read (though not so much because we already know what happens at the end) and I'm so glad I finally read it!

Add To Goodreads.

Buy Bree Tanner now:

Amazon India.

Amazon US.

Amazon UK.

Are you a Twilight Saga fan? What did you think about Bree Tanner? Let me know in the comments!

Review: Years Later On Facebook

Author: Jupinderjit Singh

Genre: Short Story, Humor. 

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫

Blurb:

This book is a collection of short-stories and Middles. It begins with the tale of a man who meets a childhood flame on Facebook. The story 'Safety-Pin 'talks about a career woman, who seeks to peep outside marriage. The range of stories takes you from voyeuristic men in a gym, and another in a train, to those taking on 'love jihad', you will find something that teases a thought. From the love story of two canines at the Indo-pak border to nature's effort to erase the borders through 'Peepal no 18'; to gun-firing in Poonch; to the serene silence of Ladakh, the book will offer food for thought to travellers as well. In fact, with glimpses of Istanbul, London, Kashmir and Rajasthan, these stories are sure to make an interesting accompaniment to your travels!

Cover Review:

The cover is a picture of a colour painting. Not really something I'd like to see as a book cover. 

Book Review:

Lets start off with the positives. The stories were funny, had a meaning and some of them were even quite impactful. 

The ones about the author himself were a lot more interesting than the others. They were funnier too.

The stories were all good and had a lot of potential. They could be better though. 

There were a lot of grammatical errors, from punctuation to sentence construction to the application of tenses. If the grammar had been better, I think I'd have given it a four stars rating. 

Some of the stories that I liked the most are 'Peepal Tree No. 918', 'The Pleasure of Giving', 'Of Ghosts and Printer's Devil's, etc.

All in all, Years Later On Facebook is a fun, light read if you can ignore the somewhat apparent grammatical errors and not-so-fun if you are irked by every single one of them. 

Add To Goodreads.

Buy Years Later...now:

Amazon India.