Review #491: Faking It (The Intern, #2) by Gabrielle Tozer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

----Abraham Lincoln

Gabrielle Tozer, an Australian author, has penned an entertaining and heart-touching sequel to her award-winning book, The Intern called, Faking It where the young adult protagonist, Josie Browning, fakes her way up the ladder to success in her new writing job with new friends and colleagues, while she has a perfect life that can make any girl envy of her, yet she lies, thereby forcing her to stand on the verge of sing her perfect and simple life.

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Review #328: Two Across by Jeff Bartsch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

----Oscar Wilde

Jeff Bartsch, an American author, has penned a heart-warming tale of two intelligent minds who not only ruled the National Spell Bee together, but also ruled a con together, in his debut book, Two Across, unfolding the journey of two teenagers to their adulthood. This is a love story between two smart individuals but layered with academic, politics, lies, scam and career and lots of crossword puzzle.

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Review #283: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“When you convert a good book to a film.. stupid things happen”

----Jesse Andrews

Jesse Andrews, an American novelist and screenwriter, has penned a brilliant and thoroughly funny YA contemporary novel about friends and films, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, where two odd teenagers come across in each other's lives with a common ground- social awkwardness. This book simply turns their friendship into something beautiful, funny and thoroughly inspiring.

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Review #137: Grace Unexpected by Gale Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Don't make something unless it is both made necessary and useful;
but if it is both necessary and useful,
don't hesitate to make it beautiful."

                                                            ---- Shaker dictum

According to Wikipedia, The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing is a religious sect, also known as the Shakers, founded in the 18th century in England, having branched off from a Quaker community. They were known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.

Gale Martin, an award winning American author and one of my favorite authors, has yet once again enthralled my soul with her new book, Grace Unexpected featuring the American Shaker community and a woman with all her confused life's decisions to make.

Synopsis:
Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say "I do." In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she's unnerved to learn that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy. When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to her new plan - dubbed the Shaker Plan - despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, a venerable anthropology professor. Both men have ample charms and soul mate potential to test her new found Shaker-style self-control, and Grace appears to be on the fast track to a marriage proposal... until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.

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Review #121: The Biology of Luck by Jacob M. Appel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.”
                                                              ----Jacob M. Appel

I don't why I'm so much drawn to marriage quotes which are dark and justifying- not the sugar-coated ones! (PS: I'm not married!) Jacob M. Appel's remarkable quoted from the book, The Biology of Luck delves into the world of a hopeless-romantic tour guide's debut novel that is written about his lady love. Yes, you read it right- a novel inside a novel! And I don't know why, this very idea of novel inside a novel set across all the 5 boroughs of New York reminds of David Gilbert's & Sons ! But every novel has its own story, likewise, Appel's novel thrushes us inside the life of a promiscuous and egotistic woman.

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Review #88: Dolls Behaving Badly by Cinthia Ritchie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Woody Allen has said,

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.

Carla Richards, who is in her late 30s, is one such woman, who had to learn this fact of happiness from a giant woman who was the guest in Oprah's talk show and by following the giant's advice to maintain a diary. Well wonder who Carla is? Carla is the main protagonist in Cinthia Ritchie's novel, Dolls Behaving Badly. The name is quirky and has a really interesting meaning to it name. Cinthia Ritchie has pen down this tale in the form of Carla's diary entry, hence the book's pace is quite good.

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Review #74: Business Doctors: Management Consulting Gone Wild by Sameer Kamat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While reading this book, I cannot help myself from quoting my favorite author, Sidney Sheldon's remarkable words:

“Business is a game, played for fantastic stakes, and you're in competition with experts. If you want to win, you have to learn to be a master of the game.”

But for every business to run smoothly, a business consultant is certainly required to keep the business running. Even those underworld businesses require a business consultant sometimes, to keep the money flowing! Yes Sameer Kamat has shown us the first-hand images to the underworld businesses, how they run, what are the wild cards to run such a business and all those nitty-gritty details about the business, in his new book called, Business Doctors. Yeah the name might sound little confusing and out-of-the-box, but this book promises to be quite scary, dark and wild and simultaneously quite hilarious at some times. All-in-all, he gives us to take peek into the world that we dare to think about!

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Review #70: But I Love You by Peter Rosch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Why are you the way you are?
asks Alicia Lynn Wilde to one of her prospect for the Elite Two Meet's members club, in the book, But I Love You written by Peter Rosch. Elite Two Meet, Alicia's brainchild, is a club of elite and super-rich, single men and women, and is built up on delusional beliefs and lies.

But I Love You is a dark love-story, although it was a one-sided love-affair, more of an obsession and possession over someone. The underlying story is a sweet love-story, but since, it's a one-sided affair, it turns quite bloody at the end.

“If you're that obsessed with someone, why would you kill her?
Humans are full of contradictions.”
----Ai Yazawa, a Japanese Magna author
Because finally when you realize that you can't possess that person's heart, who you love so deeply, then you feel like killing them and taking their souls out of them, and maybe that's a contradiction.

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