Author: Sundari Venkatraman
Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Readomania
Language: English
ISBN-10: 819299757X
ISBN-13: 9788192997575
Genre: Romance
About The Book:
Sangita Sinclair was not always this successful & passionate lady, heading the NGO “Penn Urimai” for downtrodden, abused and homeless women….
When Sangita catches the eye of Gautam Sinclair she is a simple, homely girl; utterly unaware of her charms & capabilities. She has the devil’s own time in overcoming her inhibitions, hesitation, and her family’s orthodox and outdated rules before recognising her love for Gautam.
Will Gautam be able to solve Sangita’s Dilemma or will she be forever trapped in her past?.
About The Author:
Even as a kid, Sundari absolutely loved the ‘lived happily ever after’ syndrome as she grew up reading all the fairy tales she could lay her hands on, Phantom comics, Mandrake comics and the like. It was always about good triumphing over evil and a happy end.
Soon, into her teens, Sundari switched her attention from fairy tales to Mills & Boon. While she loved reading both of these, she kept visualising what would have happened if there were similar situations happening in India; to a local hero and heroine. Her imagination took flight and she always lived in a rosy cocoon of romance over the years.
Then came the writing – a true bolt out of the blue! She could never string two sentences together. While her spoken English had always been excellent – thanks to her Grandpa – she couldn’t write to save her life.
All this changed suddenly one fine day in the year 2000. She had just quit her job as a school admin and didn’t know what to do with her life. She was saturated with simply reading books. That’s when she returned home one evening after her walk, took some sheets of paper and began writing. It was like watching a movie that was running in her head – all those years of visualising Indian heroes and heroines needed an outlet and had to be put into words. That’s how her first novel, The Malhotra Bride, took shape. While she felt discouraged when publishing didn’t happen, it was her husband who kept encouraging her not to give up.
In the meanwhile, she landed a job as Copy Editor with Mumbai Mirror. After working there for two years, she moved to the Network 18 Group and worked with two of their websites over the next six years, as Content Editor.
Despite her work schedule, she continued to write novels and then short stories and had them published in her blogs. She also blogs voraciously, writing on many different topics – travel, book reviews, film reviews, restaurant reviews, spirituality, alternative health and more.
Her first eBook Double Jeopardy – a romance novella – was published by Indireads and has been very well received by readers of romance.
In 2014, Sundari self-published The Malhotra Bride (2nd Edition); Meghna; The Runaway Bridegroom; Flaming Sun Collection 1: Happily Ever Afters From India (Box Set) and Matches Made In Heaven (a collection of romantic short stories).
2015 brought yet another opportunity. Readomania came forward to traditionally publish this book – The Madras Affair – a mature romance set in Madras.
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My Take:
The book is one of those easy reads where you have book in one hand and coffee mug in other. The book displays the mock behaivour of the society which calls itself to be educated and belonging to 21st century. But in reality it’s far from the truth and is revealed through the pages of this book. It speaks of the atrocities inflicted on women in the most subtle manner, taking away their rights to take their own decisions about their very own lives.
Every character is perfectly sketched with all the imperfections of the real life. The dilemma of the female protagonist (Sangita), the short temper and patience of the male protagonist (Gautam) and the orthodox behaivour of the parents, perfectly brings out the real life people in the reader’s mind. Being brought up in totally two different ideologies, the conflict shown is obvious. With easy language and flowing story, the book gives the reader the impression of watching the whole lives of the protagonists unfold right in front of his/her eyes. Sangita is shown to be the perfect example of what women of our society are still expected to be like. Book reverberates the fact that the society still hasn’t accepted the change and women still doesn’t have their own voice to speak out their desires.
The description of the facial expressions in the book is one of the good things, that’s rarely found. Though the end is a bit too predictable but it’s to be seen how Sangita would let go of her inhibitions and also her past. Various scenes of the duo’s romance are repetitive throughout the book but the author have described them beautifully each time.
On last note, a quick and easy read.
My Rating:
3/5
Here’s where you can grab a copy for yourself:
AMAZON.IN || FLIPKART
Related
I quite liked this book. In fact, this is one of Sundari’s bestest books.
Thank you Nibha for reading and reviewing my book. I am glad you liked it 🙂
So many reviews of books by Indian authors – time to see what they have to offer.