tales of Suchita

Winning blog hops is a novelty for me – it is like a hand has reached from outside of me, giving me that much needed validation for my writing and blogging. Thanks to Sukaina and Manali, I have now won 3 of their blog hops and 5 books!

I want to take the opportunity here to applaud them for mostly choosing indie authored books as part of their blog hop prizes. They do this to support authors and their books. It’s a great initiative on their part.

I have finally been able to finish reading 3 of the amazing 5 books I won and I thought I’ll share mini reviews of them.

While Shekhar may be a typical man, and he will obviously annoy the living daylights out of you, I loved reading the small and big ways that Anamika tries to break out of her conditioning of being the “adarsh” wife, mother, daughter-in-law and speak her truth. There are a lot of quotable quotes from Nilshree’s book but here’s one that I feel applies to all of us:

Own your choices and decisions, stop being dependent, stop tolerating what others decide for you.

As Nilshree says in the final page of the book, let’s be the proud pioneers in breaking the cycle.

“They are yelling so much. I am nervous, and I forgot what we discussed. I want to pee.” This dialogue from Rajib when they tell their parents about their “wedding” kind of sums up the chaos that is this book! I laughed so much throughout and while sometimes I wanted to strangle and shake different characters at different moments, this was a perfect weekend read.

Reading about Bombay is always a favourite part of books for me so it was great to rediscover it from Rajib and Saachi’s eyes. While the pacing was a little slow for my liking, I liked the friendship and their banter a lot.

I chose not to read this book in order. Much like I would do with a physical book, here too, I would randomly open a chapter and read what nugget it had for me for a particular day. This not only helped my overall reading experience, it also ensured I would take home the message that was essential for me.

I appreciated Tanvi’s effort of interweaving wisdom with fiction as she presented each chapter. Like Chapter 8 (one of my favourite chapters) is on tackling boredom. The advice here is,

If it seems monotonous, find your way of doing it.

She further adds that your creativity helps in making tedious tasks enjoyable. I found that a very effective way of managing my to-do lists. Though some chapters were obscure and it was difficult to understand the point being conveyed, overall, the book had some surprising secrets within its pages.

Thank you once again to Sukaina and Manali for their monthly blog hops that are a joy to participate in. And thank you for these books which I probably would not have discovered otherwise. If you want to participate in future blog hops, make sure to reach out to either of them so they can share further details with you.

So, what are you reading currently?

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This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2024