Ratings: 3.9/5
Genre: Fiction- Psychological thriller
Number of Pages: 293
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published on: 22nd march 2018

The Friend by Teresa Driscoll is a “psychological thriller with an emotional twist” , published in 2018. It deals with apprehensive and manipulative characters which makes the story a gripping one!

Summary

The story begins with the narration of the protagonist- Sophie, who’s in a train, two hundred miles away from her son, who gets an appalling information over a phone call. Her son and a boy of the same age met with an accident and are admitted in a hospital in Tedbury.
The story continues in flashbacks and in present-day scenario (mostly in Sophie’s point of view). Sophie lives in Tedbury, along with her son, Ben and her husband, Mark. She remembers how she met Emma Carter, her “friend” who had a son, a year younger than Ben, named Theodore. They had just moved to Tedbury and soon Sophie and Emma become close friends, so good friends that they actually think of doing business together!
However, as the story advances, we happened to come across more secrets and plot twists which keeps us intrigued till the end.

“People tell you to try not to think about it. Your own instinct is not to think about it. But that doesn’t work. The trick is to learn to cope with thinking about it. To accept how truly awful it was.”

Personal Reviews

I liked the epilogue and the way the story advances and the plot twists make it an absolute page turner. However, I feel the narration is heightened unnecessarily at some places. The characters are strong and manipulative, and the climax keeps you hooked till you reach the last page. I’d rate it 8/10.

“Not every hour is equal. Ask an insomniac how long the night is.“

About the author

Teresa Driscoll is a million-copy bestselling author of psychological suspense and women’s fiction – sold in 20 languages. She is also a former journalist and BBC TV presenter. Her debut psychological suspense novel was “I’m watching you”. THE FRIEND is fourth such thriller written by her.

Ratings: 4.5
Genre: Thriller; A fusion of mythology with historical and fictional events
Number of Pages: 282
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Vineet Bajpai publishers
Published in: 2017

Harappa- curse of the blood river, one of the three books of the Harappa Trilogy written by Vineet Bajpai. It deals with fictional, mythological and historical events, crafted beautifully by the author.

Summary

The plot deals with three different timelines and settings with a veiled connection- 2017(present time)in Delhi and Vanaras, 1700 BC in Harappa, also 2017 in Rome and Paris. Also there is a part which deals with Goa in the 16th century.

2017:-
Vidyut Shastri, a young entrepreneur from Delhi, who lives with his girlfriend, Damini, gets an unexpected summon from his 108 year-old great grandfather who is now on his deathbed. The old matthadheesh or clan-leader Brahmin from the ancient Indian city of Kashi (Banaras) wants to reveal the secret of a prehistoric curse to Vidyut. A curse that not just destroyed an entire civilization thousands of years ago, but also obliterated its very truth. Until now. The dying Brahmin, Dwarka Shastri, is the last among a lineage of guardians of a hidden cellar in the complex maze of a Shiva temple in Banaras. There lies buried a 3,500 year-old encrypted and preserved hand-written scroll. It has a lone Sanskrit couplet written on it, along with a prophecy that during a specific sacred hour in the Rohini Nakshatra (constellation) on the purnima or full-moon as per the shaka-samvat or Hindu calendar, a person of their own bloodline, yet unblemished by the sins of his ancestors, will unfurl the dark secret. He will put an end to the most horrifying curse in the history of mankind. The sacred hour has arrived.
Vidyut reaches the Matth at Vanaras along with his best friend, Bala, to find that his Baba(Great Grandfather) was seriously ill.
But the Oldman was adamant to spill the beans he was holding for these many years, about how Vidyut was the last Devta, an reincarnation of Vivasvan Pujari, their ancestor and he was their saviour and was born for a great reason, not only for their tribe but the whole mankind.
Vidyut meets Naina, who supposedly has been waiting for him for 20 long years and clearly is in love with him. She’s exceptionally beautiful and multi-talented. Thus, here comes a love triangle into play.
Vidyut saves his life from a deadly killer, Romi Pereira, sent from Paris, only to find out that his closest friend was betraying him.

1700 BCE:-
Vivasvan Pujari, termed as Devta(half-human, half-God), was the most enlightened and loved one in the golden city of Harappa. He was going to be the cheif priest of the town. He had a happy family, his wife Sanjna and son Manu. Although his closest friend, Chandradhar was extremely happy for him, his wife, Priyamvada was equally jealous.

“It is a woman that is the progenitor of entire creation. Yet it is often a woman that has led to the bloodiest of wars. Man is but a conduit for the will of the woman.”

She wanted to be the princess of the city. So she plotted wicked plans against Vivasvan, accuses him of murder of the dancer, Nayantara, gets the whole city intoxicated with the help of some Mesopotamian magicians: Ap, Sha and Gun, and throws the Devta into MritKarawas (the dungeons of the dead) and proclaims herself as the Queen. Manu, Vivasvan’s son tries his best to rescue his father, but fails.
Furious Vivaasan who’s almost strangling for a survival , after having spent some excruciating time within the four walls of the mritkaravas and receiving pelting from the drunken crowd blurts out the most pristine and yet the most vicious words, cursing all of Harappa and the whole mankind towards Pralay- deluge of the dead!

About the Author

Vineet Bajpai (born 18 September 1977) is an Indian entrepreneur and author. Bajpai is the author of five books: Build From Scratch, The Street to the Highway, The 30 Something CEO, Harappa: Curse of the Blood River , Pralay: The Great Deluge and Kashi: Secret of the Black Temple. He is the Founder and CEO of Talentrack, an online platform for hiring and talent crowd sourcing for the media and entertainment sector.He is also the Founder & Chairman of Magnon\TBWA and Magnon eg+. Both Magnon companies are part of the Fortune 500 Omnicom Group.

Personal Reviews

The plot of the book is amazing. Though, the beginning is a bit complex, it becomes clear as the story moves ahead and the points are connected. The dynamic characters, the flow and narration and the word-craft simply makes the book a must read . The sporadical change in the timeline and place helps a lot in maintaining the suspense. You just cannot keep the book down until you’ve reached the end.

“The blackest of depravity and the whitest of goodness, both reside in the same heart, suppressed or bolstered at the behest of the soul.”

“Religion is a great cleanser, but it is also vulnerable to the dirt it aims to clean.”

Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Friction
Number of pages: 304
Published on: November 2018
Publisher: Westland
Set in: India

The Girl in room 105 is the tenth book written by one of the bestselling Indian author, Chetan Bhagat. It is his first book based on crime thriller, which is very different from the usual romance stories that he had written. The book not only revolves around the crime scene but also unveils the various political scenarios, the investigation procedures, the media and the stereotypes of Indians.

Summary

The story begins with the author having a conversation with a fellow passenger on an IndiGo flight bound to Delhi from Hyderabad. The man introduces himself as Keshav and insists to tell him his “unlove story”. The rest story is narrated in first person by Keshav.

Keshav is an ex IITian who works at Chandan classes, a JEE coaching centre. He is still in love with his ex girlfriend, Zara Lone, whom he often drunk dials and texts, which annoys her boyfriend, Raghav. Saurabh, Keshav’s colleague at the coaching centre and one of his closest friends , always advices him to move on from her and get a life. Zara Lone is a Kashmiri Muslim and is a fair and beautiful lady, contrary to her Boyfriend Raghav who is a South Indian, is intelligent but has geeky looks. Zara is pursuing a degree of PhD in IIT Delhi.

On her birthday, Keshav somehow stops himself from calling to wish her but at about 3 A.M. he gets a text from Zara that she was expecting a birthday wish from him. To make it up, he goes to her hostel to wish her in person. He takes Sourabh along with him and asks him to wait, watch and warn if anyone was around. He climbed the tree near room 105 and got in through the window. He finds Zara asleep on the bed. He talks to her for some time but finding no response he touches her forehead to find she was dead cold. She had been murdered. He was shocked and deeply sad to find the girl he loved, dead, on her birthday.
He determined to find out the one who took away his love from him. Although he himself becomes a suspect, it is lifted as Keshav’s father belongs to a renowned political party. He along with Saurabh with the permission of the police officer, Inspector Rana, investigates the case.
The Watchman of the hostel, who was away during the time of murder, becomes the easiest suspect to the investigating officer. Also, Zara had complained against the watchman stating that he gave pervy looks to the girls passing by thus adding as a reason for his arrest, but that wasn’t a cause strong enough plus there was lack of evidence. However, the suspicion shifts to Professor Saxena who was Zara’s PhD guide, who also tries to harass her.
When Zara’s room is searched, Keshav finds a safe which contained some gunpowder, costly jewelry, pregnancy test kits and a mobile phone which had pictures of Zara and Sikandar (Zara’s step-brother) .
Keshav and Saurabh fly to Srinagar to find Sikandar, whom they suspect to have killed Zara. They find that he was a part of some terrorist group named TEJ.
Sikandar kills himself to convince everyone that he was loyal to his group to have not leaked out any information and also that he did not kill his dear sister.
On further investigation, he finds out that a family friend and an Army man had gifted Zara some expensive jewelry, the one they found in her safe. They conclude that he had an affair with Zara, and as she was pregnant, he couldn’t afford this news to be out, so he killed her.
Zara’s father arranges a small prayer at their house on 100th Day after Zara’s death where they were supposed to catch the culprit. However, Keshav takes a small trip to Hyderabad before that, the trip clears his mind and he finds out who actually is the murderer.

“When you lose something, don’t think of it as a loss. Accept it as a gift that gets you on the path you were meant.”

About the author

Chetan Bhagat (born 22 April 1974) is an Indian author, columnist, screenwriter and motivational speaker, known for his Indian-English novels about young middle class Indians. Bhagat writes columns on youth, career development and current affairs for The Times of India (in English) and Dainik Bhaskar (in Hindi). His debut novel was Five point someone. His books have inspired five Bollywood movies (Kai Po Che, 3 idiots, 2 states, half girlfriend and Hello).

Personal Reviews

Chetan Bhagat is mostly known for his writings on young romance. The girl in room 105 is the first crime thriller novel by him. The plot twists does add suspense and thrill to the story, but it also feels like an exaggerated version of a CID episode.The mysterious setting keeps your attention binded and is good for a one time read. I’d rate it 7 on a scale of 10.

“Brida” is a moving tale of love, passion, mystery and spirituality by the master storyteller and philosopher, Paulo Coelho. Originally published in 1990, it’s a mystical story and is in third person narration by the author.

“Being human means having doubts and yet still continuing on your path.”

Summary

Brida is a twenty one year old Irish gal, a plain gal who works, is taken care of by her parents and loves her boyfriend, but with extra inquisitiveness. She’s interested in magic and is in search of a teacher who’ll help her to know more about the mysteries of the universe.

She happens to meet a man, almost twice of her age, the Magus. He lives a lonely life in the forest and is an exceptional teacher of the tradition of the Sun. Brida feels she’s not meant to follow that tradition, so she decides that she’d not meet him until she had actually learnt something.

With the help of a shopkeeper, Brida comes to know about another teacher, Wicca. She’s a woman much elder to her, who knows and practices the tradition of the Moon.

She teaches Brida a lot about witchcraft, both the traditions, their similarities, differences and the meaning of soulmate. But she doesn’t tell Brida what she was keen to know the most- How to find one’s soulmate?
When she asked her this, she said-
“By taking risks, by risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love.”

She met Magus so that he could teach
this, and he told her that she’ll eventually be able to see the light above the left shoulder of her soulmate, or the special spark in their eyes. Magus knew, from the very first time they had met, that Brida was his soulmate but he wanted her to find out on her own.

“Finding one important thing in your life doesn’t mean you have to
give up all the other important things.”

In her quest for wisdom, she struggles to find balance between her relationships, a normal life and a desire to discern her transformed self to resolve and understand the riddles of God.

About The Author

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Coelho’s parents, however, wanted him to follow more of a traditional path since his father was an engineer, a man of “logic and intellect”. When their attempts to suppress his devotion to literature failed, they took it as a sign of mental illness. At 17, Coelho’s introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. At his parents’ wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.

Personal Reviews

Brida is one of the international bestsellers with an unusual story of spirituality. There’s an extensive use of words like Religion, God and Magic. Anyone who’s not very interested in religion, Christianity, Spirituality, Tarot cards and Witchcraft might find it bland and monotonous. However, there’s a pretty good collection of quotes.

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.“

“What we see is not always what exists.”

“The girl on the train” is the first thriller by Paula Hawkins, published in January 2015, by Riverhead books in US and Doubleday in UK. It’s a top-notch thriller and an undoubtedly compulsive read. The book was adapted into a film by DreamWorks Pictures, released in September 2016, starring Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, Haley Bennett as Megan and Justin Theroux as Tom; directed by Tate Taylor.
It’s a thriller based screen play with lots of suspense, vengeance and psychological conundrums giving it crazy plot twists.

Summary

This story is a first person narration read from the point of view of 3 eminent female characters viz: Rachel Watson, Megan Hipwell and Anna.Rachel Watson, is a 32-year divorced woman, an alcohol addict. Earlier she used to live with her husband, Tom, who left her for a woman, Anna. Rachel got into this drinking habit since they couldn’t have a baby which got her depressed. She lost her job as well because of being drunk at work. When she’s drunk, she often calls up and harasses Tom, which of course annoys Anna, his wife. She used to pretend to go to work to London daily by this 8.04 train. On the way, the train stops at a signal at Witney, exactly where she used to live with Tom, where now he lives with Anna and his little daughter Evie.
To not get more depressed, she avoids looking at her own house. Instead she looks at a house few yards away from it, where lives a beautiful couple, whom she names “Jason” and “Jess”. She thinks them to be the most perfect and happy couple. She even started to feel that she actually knows them personally, even when she doesn’t.And then one day, Rachel sees something shocking which breaks the myth of “Jason and Jess” being the perfect couple. It’s only a minute until the train moves on. But it’s enough. She saw Jess kissing someone in their back garden. She couldn’t believe what she saw and it mattered to her even though she didn’t even know them. She felt even more depressed and she was too drunk. Next morning, she woke up with wounds and blood all over and she didn’t remember anything except that something BAD had happened. She had no memories. Later, she finds out that Megan Hipwell (whom she called Jess) was missing and Scott Hipwell (Jason) was called to the police station for enquiries. She felt that Scott should know what she saw from the train. She contacts him, tells him and gets indulged in the case only to know that she was there at Witney, the night Megan disappeared. She too became one of the suspects.Megan, who lost her elder brother back in her teenage days, a runaway, has some dark secrets which doesn’t let her sleep at night. She was an artist and had a gallery but soon it closed down. She started working as a “nanny” for Tom and Anna, but leaves the job in a few days. She goes to a therapist named Dr. Kamal Abdic. She lets go off all the secrets she had kept to herself all these years and finding Kamal to be a patient listener, who ain’t judging her, they have an affair. Kamal is the one, Rachel saw, kissing Megan. Now, Kamal too becomes a suspect.When Megan’s body is discovered, it’s found that she was pregnant. The DNA of the dead baby neither matches with Scott nor Kamal. That ensures that there was someone else as well.Rachel feels she is now much more than just “the girl on the train” as she was present there the night Megan disappeared. So she stops drinking, tries to be sober and slowly her memories return of that night. She also realizes that much of the things Tom told her, when she was drunk, was a lie. He had actually been gaslighting her for years. She begins to trust her own memories and now remembers the worst that happened that night.Anna suspects that Tom had an affair with someone and she eventually finds out that it was with Megan. Rachel comes to her place and reveals all that she remembers. At first, she didn’t want to believe her. And that is when Tom comes in. Finding Rachel so confident about her memories, he tries to hurt her to keep her mouth shut. He accepts that Megan was pregnant with his child, and Megan wanted him to accept that. So he killed her. Rachel tries to run away to save her life. When Tom comes behind her, she shoves the corkscrew in his neck. Anna comes after to make sure he’s dead. She calls up the police as well and gives the statement for Rachel that it was committed out of self defense.Rachel moves away from Witney. She is now alone, with her nightmares, which she believes she’ll get over soon.

About the Author

Paula Hawkins (born 26 August 1972) is a Zimbabwe-born British author, best known for her best-selling psychological thriller novel The Girl on the Train (2015).
She worked as a journalist for The Times, reporting on business. She then worked for a number of publications on a freelance basis, and wrote a financial advice book for women, The Money Goddess.
Around 2009, Hawkins began to write romantic comedy fiction under the name Amy Silver, writing four novels including Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista.

Personal Reviews

“The girl on the train” is a gripping and enthralling story. It’s thrilling with it’s situation, plot twists, suspense and the dark secrets of the characters. Though the other writers of this genre have set the bar already high enough, this is still one of it’s kind. Once you start reading it, you’d want to binge read it just to know what really happens ultimately. You might find that all the characters in some way or other are a bit insane, but this insanity does bring lots of twists in the play.When I finished reading the book at 1 a.m., it kept me up most of the night. The story is wildly unpredictable. I can be sure that looking out of the window when in a train will always remind me of this book, it’s characters!