Review: Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

Publication date: January 28th, 2014
Publisher: HarlequinTEEN
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository
Stars: 3/5
Source: NetGalley

Life. Death. And...Love?

Emma would give anything to talk to her mother one last time. Tell her about her slipping grades, her anger with her stepfather, and the boy with the bad reputation who might be the only one Emma can be herself with.

But Emma can't tell her mother anything. Because her mother is brain-dead and being kept alive by machines for the baby growing inside her.

Meeting bad-boy Caleb Harrison wouldn't have interested Old Emma. But New Emma-the one who exists in a fog of grief, who no longer cares about school, whose only social outlet is her best friend Olivia-New Emma is startled by the connection she and Caleb forge.

Feeling her own heart beat again wakes Emma from the grief that has grayed her existence. Is there hope for life after death-and maybe, for love?

REVIEW

What do you do when you're losing the person who matters the most and suddenly, everything else loses meaning? When all that's left is anger, grief and guilt? Elizabeth Scott explores this in Heartbeat where Emma's senior year is far from what she imagined it would be like. Her mother is brain-dead, still pregnant, kept alive by machines until her baby brother can be born. She's angry that her step-father chose this for her mother... chose to have her kept alive as a vegetable as she believes her mother never wanted the baby in the first place. Her grades have gone out of the window but still, she finds love and support in unexpected places.

Heartbeat was a very difficult book to read and I cannot imagine what it would've been like to write. It reverberates sadness and leaves you at a loss for words. Emma keeps going back and forth, from anger to grief to anger to guilt, and it's frustrating, sometimes monotonous, but also realistic... when she takes her time to waver towards acceptance. I think this was the strongest point of the point... how ongoing the cycle of grief and hopelessness was until the breakthrough.

While the relationship between Emma and Caleb was this ray of light in the otherwise dark place she was in... it didn't convince me. It felt like Caleb just happened to be there and that he had experienced loss at a similar scale helped. I was more gripped by Emma's relationship with her stepfather, the baby, the lingering presence of her mother and her perspective on school and life. How these things were challenged in the face of regrets and blame, and how she came to terms with them.

It took time to get into Heartbeat but at its core, it is a well-written, perspective-changing and poignant read about love, loss and how you never really move on from the latter.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Featuring: Mohini by Ramendra Kumar [Guest Post]

I'm happy to feature Ramendra Kumar on the blog today! Ramendra Kumar is the author of Mohini, which delves deep into the world of Bollywood. Scroll down to read about his take on movies, the kind of books he writes and more :)

A beautiful and charismatic actress, a sensitive and immensely gifted director, a scheming, wily but brilliant manager - Mohini is the pulsating saga of three individuals - each driven by an obsession. Set in the backdrop of the bold and brazen world of Bollywood, it is a tale of passion, intrigue and suspense. The narrative moves at a roller coaster speed and captures love in its myriad shades: infatuation, romance, commitment, lust and obsession...

A young girl growing up in the backwaters of Bollywood nurses a burning desire to become the number one star in the industry. In her ruthless, and sometimes reckless, pursuit she uses and is used by many individuals. However, there are two men in her life who love her to absolute distraction. Each in his own way helps her reach the zenith of fame and success. One she betrays and the other she rejects. Both unleash vengeance and in a strange quirk of serendipity are pitted against each other as the novel hurtles to a throbbing, thrilling climax…

Mohini is not merely a saga of romance - the tale offers an insight into the biggest film industry on Planet Earth - the murky manipulations, the dirty deals, the shameless shenanigans, the tears behind the glycerin, the pain behind the paint and the suffering beyond the celluloid.

Publication month: January 2014

Publisher: Bluejay Books Pvt. Ltd

Links: Ebay|Goodreads|SapnaOnline|Homeshop18|Amazon.in 

GUEST POST:

A SPOT OF JOY, A SLICE OF VALUE

Over the years there have been several debates regarding a particular tag to be attached to a movie : parallel or popular cinema, art or commercial cinema or realistic or escapist cinema. I loved what Shyam Benegal once famously said, “There are only two kinds of cinema – good cinema and bad cinema.”

I have always been a huge film buff and enjoyed the entire range - action, comedy, drama, pathos et al. I have admired Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Kundan Shah, Shyam Benegal, Sai Paranjpe, Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra and many others. But if were asked to choose the entire oeuvre of a director and then pick the best I would select Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Rajkumar Hirani. And if I were to pick one movie from repertoire of each of these master craftsmen it would be ‘Anand’ and ‘3 Idiots’. I have a few reasons for zeroing in on these two directors and these two movies which I would like to share.

I have so far written 24 books for children. In every book of mine I have tried to tell a story which is racy and has a reasonably high EQ (Entertainment Quotient). I believe that today a young reader has too many choices. Hence if she is not hooked from the first word to the last she would simply switch over to the some other medium. But then I also feel that only entertainment is not enough, providing escapist fare alone will not do. There should be a take away in the form of at least a hint of a whisper of value. It should not be thrust like the anti-tobacco messages on the idiot box or a Rajashree Production melodrama but rather it should be subtle tucked somewhere in the narrative so that the young one internalizes it without even realizing.

Both Anand and 3 Idiots offer dollops of entertainment. Rajesh Khanna, in his most memorable role, keeps you in splits almost throughout. Yet, even as the movie moves to a predictable denouement the value is clear : “Babumushai, zindagi lambi nahin badi honi chahiye.” In 3 Idiots Amir and his friends blunder their way through the movie. And at the end what remains is Amir’s brilliant performance and the message: ‘Strive for excellence, not success. Once you achieve excellence, success would automatically follow.’

In my first book for adults, Mohini too I have stuck to my credo. It has been called a gripping, racy, un-putdownable narrative that takes a behind the scenes look at the ‘the murky manipulations, the dirty deals, the shameless shenanigans, the tears behind the glycerin, the pain behind the paint and the suffering beyond the celluloid.’ However, it goes beyond the grim reality and the sordid drama to offer more than a dash of hope. It reiterates that it is not unbridled manipulation, naked ambition or overpowering obsession that can bring happiness. Joy and contentment can come from a simple, yet all powerful four letter word called Love. 

As I sign off let me humbly appeal to the marquee names of tinsel town and the czars and czarinas of the literary planet. Beyond the esoteric and the abstract, beyond the hype and the hoopla, there is a little space ‘rented out’ by the child in each of us. Reach out to that space with a bit of humour and a ripple of hope, a spot of joy and a slice of value.

                                                                   ~ RAMENDRA KUMAR 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ramendra Kumar (Ramen) is ‘A Writer by Passion’. An award winning author with 23 books to his credit, he spins yarns mainly for the young and the young at heart. He also dabbles in satire, poetry, fiction and travelogues. His work has been published by some of the best names in the business and translated into several Indian and foreign languages. His stories have found a place in text books and anthologies published across the world. Ramen, an inspirational speaker and storyteller, is a regular at leading seminars and literary festivals both in India and abroad. Mohini, his first novel for adults was launched on 1/12014. Its publishers Bluejay/Shristi had to go in for the second impression, because of the demand based on pre-orders, almost immediately after its first edition. Mohini has also been maintaining its position close to the top on Amazon's 'Hot New Releases' list.

To know more about Ramen you can visit his website or his page on Wikipedia. 

He is working as Chief of Communications, Rourkela Steel Plant, Odisha.

Review: Stir Me Up by Sabrina Elkins

Publication date: 1st October, 2013
Publisher: HarlequinTEEN
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Stars: 3.5/5
Source: NetGalley

Cami Broussard has her future all figured out. She'll finish her senior year of high school, then go to work full-time as an apprentice chef in her father's French restaurant, alongside her boyfriend, Luke. But then twenty-year-old ex-Marine Julian Wyatt comes to live with Cami's family while recovering from serious injuries. And suddenly Cami finds herself questioning everything she thought she wanted.

Julian's all attitude, challenges and intense green-brown eyes. But beneath that abrasive exterior is a man who just might be as lost as Cami's starting to feel. And Cami can't stop thinking about him. Talking to him. Wanting to kiss him. He's got her seriously stirred up. Her senior year has just gotten a lot more complicated…

REVIEW

Keywords from the blurb that made me decide to read Stir Me Up despite my ambivalence towards New Adult fiction:

apprentice chef

ex-Marine

all attitude, challenges, intense-green eyes

stirred up

Quite simply, the concoction to die for! Sabrina Elkins' writing only strengthens the surface-level awesomeness of the premise. She thickens it with characters you can think around rather than cardboard cut-outs with default-pasts and actual, in-depth conversations between the characters at crossroads anyone can relate to.

Cami's senior year was supposed to be clear-cut: with classes ending by afternoon, her part-time job as an apprentice chef and time with her boyfriend. Her future is just within reach; she's going to work full-time at her father's restaurant. Then the worst of circumstances brings Julian, her stepmother's nephew and ex-Marine to Cami's home and from that point on, the year is nothing like what she thought it would be. Everything Cami thought she had figured out is put to test and there's verbal spars, reluctant truces, attraction, confusion, self-doubt and worries about her future.

There's also plenty of unbelievable hotness, mouthwatering food and an idealistic (highlight to read possibly spoiler-y adjective) resolution of things... as suggested by the blurb and cover! And honestly, anything less and I would've been disappointed.

Whether it's Cami's stubborn but doting father, her theater-loving best friend who's there at a moment's notice or even Luke, the boy she thought she would be with forever... Stir Me Up is filled with characters you will come to care about, if not instantly like. It may not be a game changer in its genre, but it never promises to be anything but an engagingly romantic read in the first place. It's well written, thought provoking, extremely fun to read and in Julian, you might just find a potential book boyfriend!

Rating: ★★★1/2

~

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On Books! has been shortlisted for the BlogAdda Blog Awards (category: Entertainment) and it would be awesome if you could vote for my blog by clicking on the below graphic and hitting Like/tweet:

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Review: The Secret Proposal by Aniesha Brahma

Publication year: 2012
Publisher: General Press
Links: Goodreads | Flipkart India
Stars: 3/5
Source: Review copy

Eight years ago, she was the teenager he would use to get out of boring parties. But now, he is stunned to see her grown up.

He decides to delay his marriage by getting into a false engagement with her. Then he falls in love with someone else and she forces herself to move on. He comes back to her, but she's determined not to take him back. Will she ever get over her unrequited love for him?

Would a grand gesture from him make her believe otherwise?

And how do you know that your knight in shining armour has been standing right next to you?

Join Tanveer 'Veer' Bhattacharya and Larissa 'Jasmine' Chakroborty as they embark on a journey which questions relationships, friendships and makes one wonder...

how long would it take for love to eventually find a way?

REVIEW

I started reading The Secret Proposal a little before my December break and it felt amazing to sink into this... fluffy, dreamy haven. The Secret Proposal is a story of unrequited love, a fake engagement that gets out of hand and a lot of ups and downs, highs and lows, red, green and mixed signals in between.

If I had to describe the protagonist, Larissa "Jasmine" Chakroborty in one word, I'd go with "likable". She's someone you'd easily be friends with and that made it easier to slip into her predicament and feel a part of this insane chapter of her life. Tanveer "Veer" Bhattacharya is the kind of guy you would fall for and probably idealise a bit too much... so I could see what Jasmine saw in him. And then there's Neeraj, who comes out of nowhere and there's no second guessing his role in the story.

As you may have guessed from the title and the cover, The Secret Proposal feels like something out of a fairy-tale. Sure, there's no prince and princess and magical kingdom but there's Veer who could double for Prince Charming in Jasmine's eyes, even if he gets on her last nerve... and Jasmine herself, who is waiting to be swept off her feet, even if it is through a fake engagement to the boy she's secretly been in love with since forever.

The Secret Proposal is at the same time a bit more grounded than most fairy-tales. For instance, the media threatens to ruin everything. We are given more than a taste of Kolkata: with a full, blown-up picture of the city during Durga Puja; the mouth-watering sweets, colours, diyas and dancing. The Happily Ever After isn't instantaneous. The pangs of misery, loneliness and confusion before the Ever After feel real. More than anything, the Prince Charming here messes up a lot and needs timely help from a good friend to make his Grand Sweeping Gesture that was staring at him in the face all along!

There are times when the ups and downs of Veer and Jasmine's relationship get a little too much and the description of Veer's "chocolate brown eyes" during their every encounter feels like too much of an overkill... but overall, The Secret Proposal is a light and breezy read. It's just the book you'd pick up if you were in the mood for something girly and romantic... if you don't mind a few cliches (and a lot of swooning) here and there. Especially when they are well-written cliches and there's enough banter to keep you entertained!

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books I Read in 2013

hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

I must confess, I feel a little underwhelmed this year.

I didn't read as much as I had in 2012. I fell short of my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal by 29 books (71/100 books). My reviews and posts were sporadic and off schedule. I guess real life got in the way.

Nevertheless, just scrolling through the list of books I did read in 2013 brought back a lot of memories: from characters that popped out of the page, the most intense book moments ever to real-life events intimately tied to the book I was reading at that time. I had a really hard time narrowing it down to the top ten best ten books I read in 2013 because there were so many books that impacted me in so many different ways!

THE BEST TEN BOOKS I READ IN 2013

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell [REVIEW]

I cannot believe this book has been around for so long and I almost didn't read it. Rainbow Rowell is an incredible writer and you will know this if you read Attachments as it has this amazing setting (the Y2K speculation), characters I could relate to, fun movie references and hilarity in every second page. I read this book twice this year and both times, it bowled me over with its depth and warmth!

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

I never got around to reviewing Me Before You because by the time I was done with it, there. were. no. words. left.

Me Before You was poignant... so much so that I ditched everything I had going on at that moment to root for these characters... engrossed in their struggles and triumphs. It tackles some difficult issues but above everything, it is a love story; one that is earnest and tearful and one that matters.

Maybe I Will by Laurie Gray [REVIEW]

A game-changing narrative that breaks barriers related to perception of sexual assault and its consequences. This book felt real, raw and eye-opening. I cannot forget the day I read it and how I was left quieter, kind of awestruck... with a lump in my throat.

Confessions of an Almost Girlfriend (Confessions, #2) by Louise Rozett [REVIEW]

Confessions of an Almost Girlfriend is book #2 in the Confessions series that renewed my faith in series set in high school that were defined by... well, ordinary high school stuff. A mix of happy, sad, angry, relevant and interesting is what this book was.

Pivot Point (Pivot Point, #1) by Kasie West

This one was high school with a supernatural an evolutionary (?) twist. Who would've thought one choice, a pivot point, could potentially change everything? I loved how the mind powers in this book weren't as easy or straight-up-cool as most superpowers. The plot was engrossing and threatened to wreck my heart at every turn. .__.

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1) by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) [MINI-REVIEW]

I might be a little biased since I don't think I would've read this book if it weren't written by Rowling but... it felt so good to have Rowling back! The quirky and well etched-out muggle characters, the well grounded Cormoran Strike, old fashioned detection, passages wrought with charm... I cannot wait for more of this series!

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell [REVIEW]

Another Rainbow Rowell novel... and this one is set in college! From fangirling, fanfiction, writing fiction that isn't fanfiction, being a social recluse, making those first friends to charming, polite, smiling Levi, Fangirl will slowly steal your heart and bring back any fandom-related nostalgia!

The Angry Woman Suite by Lee Fullbright [REVIEW]

Vivid, thorough and mind-numbingly heartwrenching. While The Angry Woman Suite can get really heavy... definitely not something you can read at any time... it is because of the intricacy of the narratives as a result of which the characters stay with you. A surprise favourite that blew me away!

Finding Cinderella (Hopeless #2.5) by Colleen Hoover

A novella that was... spunky, I guess.
Fresh.
NOT your average love story where the Boy and Girl play way too many mind games and create issues out of nothing.
Has a twist that comes out of nowhere and that will definitely shock you... even more if you've read Hopeless. 
Contains straight-up brazenness... so much of it... that saves so much time and makes the main characters your heroes in every way.

The Homing Pigeons by Sid Bahri [REVIEW]

A beautifully written love story set during the 2008 recession. More than the love story itself, it's the writing and characterisation that makes this Indian contemporary novel shine.

OTHER STAND-OUTS

1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Utterly. Captivating. And dreamy.

2. The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan

Neat. Well written. Layered. A pretty awesome addition to the Young Adult boarding-school genre with enough suspense, intrigue and drama to keep it engaging.

3. Just One Day (Just One Day, #1) by Gayle Forman

The one fateful encounter and that one magical day that sets this story rolling captured enough of my imagination that the succeeding detatchment and misery felt real... and the changes that followed in the protagonist's character inevitable. I still haven't stopped wondering about the cliffhanger ending.

4. You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik

Despite the controversy surrounding the author and book, the prose was stunning... haunting, almost.

Happy new year, everybody! :)

Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Publication date: September 10th, 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository | Infibeam (India)
Stars: 4.5/5
Source: Bought

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park.

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan . . .

But for Cath, being a fan is her life — and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

REVIEW

Okay, so. This book!

I don't even know where to start with it. I don't know whether to gush about it incessantly... that would come naturally because I am definitely containing myself from gushing along various incoherent tangents right now... or I could collect my thoughts and write something that resembles coherence.

But. Really. Fangirl demands squealing. *points to the title* It embodies awesomeness in a way that's inarticulate, gushworthy and epic.

It's about Cather, this girl, who's a devout Harry Po Simon Snow fan. Like in a my-life-depends-on-it-and-it-sucks-that-I-can't-attend-Hogwarts-Watford-School-for-Magicks way. She writes Simon Snow fanfiction... really good slash fan fiction that's read by millions of fans over the world. And yeah, she's going to a college a few hours away with her twin Wren, who does not want to be roommates because they "need to meet other people".

Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.

What follows is a girl-meets-roommate's-"boyfriend", girl-writes-a-story-that's-not-fan-fiction and girl-sorts-out-family-stuff plot in a way that's most layered, complex and non-cliched. It reads like your favourite fantasy novel minus the fantasy with the warmth and once-upon-a-time-storybook-like comfort it brings. It begs you to highlight almost every line and scream "ME TOO!" because if you picked up this book, you are a fangirl in some way, aren't you? Rowell does a brilliant job integrating Simon Snow snippets as well, which makes you truly feel the way you felt when you were hooked on to something... when it began, when it was happening and when it ended and then never truly ended! 

Rowell also gives us a way more holistic picture of college than most books of this genre do. She does not forget the roommate, the initial cluelessness/social awkwardness and the people you leave behind. What more, she gives us LEVI, who shaped up to be perfect... not Gary Sue perfect, but quirky perfect! There were passages about him that made me smile so much and others that had me swoony and teary eyed. He's so good natured and charming, there's this part where Cath describes his face as the "smilingest" and it does not sound wrong at all!

While it's not without occasional lapses in momentum, Fangirl is what Rainbow Rowell's Attachments was to romcom novels and the Y2K era and what Eleanor & Park was to coming-of-age: a pretty darn amazing addition to its genre! It's wholesome in its depiction of college life (whether it's Cath's or Wren's side of the coin) with sensitively etched out characters and if you've ever geeked out about something or read/written fan fiction, pays rightful homage to that phase!

“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”

~

 

"Okay." She turned around and unlocked the door. "You can come in. I'm not sure yet about all the other stuff."

"Okay," Levi said. She heard the very beginning of a smile in his voice -a fetal smile- and it very nearly killed her.

-Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell

Rating: ★★★★1/2

Kismet Book Touring & Harlequin TEEN Promo Blitz: Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

Heartbeat
by Elizabeth Scott
Release Date: 01/28/14
Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Emma would give anything to talk to her mother one last time. Tell her about her slipping grades, her anger with her stepfather, and the boy with the bad reputation who might be the only one Emma can be herself with.

But Emma can’t tell her mother anything. Because her mother is brain-dead and being kept alive by machines for the baby growing inside her.

Meeting bad-boy Caleb Harrison wouldn’t have interested Old Emma. But New Emma—the one who exists in a fog of grief, who no longer cares about school, whose only social outlet is her best friend Olivia—New Emma is startled by the connection she and Caleb forge. Feeling her own heart beat again wakes Emma from the grief that has grayed her existence. Is there hope for life after death—and maybe, for love?

   

THOUGHTS

I love Elizabeth Scott and the title and cover both make my heart quicken. While the blurb of Heartbeat makes it sound like a more intense read than I'd expect it to be, Scott's characters are usually so well-fleshed out that it's bound to be worth it! :) Can't wait to read this one!

PRAISE FOR HEARTBEAT

“An intense examination of a family coping with grief, this absorbing character study easily keeps pages turning.”

— Kirkus on Heartbeat

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIZABETH SCOTT grew up in a town so small it didn’t even have a post office, though it did boast an impressive cattle population. She’s sold hardware and panty hose and had a memorable three-day stint in the dot-com industry, where she learned that she really didn’t want a career burning CDs. She lives just outside Washington, D.C., with her husband, and firmly believes you can never own too many books

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