Review: Love Story? Seriously!

Love Story? Seriously! by Shivi Pandey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

BookLysis of Love Story? Seriously! By Shivi Pandey (My Rating: ***½/5)

I have finished reading the second title published by Petals Publishers. The first book I read by same publishers was Heart of Bullets by Nikhil Kushwaha. Today I am sharing my
BookLysis of Love Story? Seriously! by Shivi Pandey.

BOOKLYSIS of Love Story? Seriously! By Shivi Pandey

COVER AND TITLE: Love Story? Seriously! is the catchy title in itself. The use of question mark and exclamation mark create curiosity among readers. A man is covering his face with his both hands who is looking desperate on the front cover. Back of a couple sitting near trees can be seen on the front cover. The book title is printed at the center of the cover. ‘L’ of ‘Love’ looks like slept ‘T’, ‘O’ in ‘story’ represents broken heart. Opening end of ‘S’ in the ‘Seriously’ looks like a mouth of a black snake. Grey, Red, Black and White colour combination of front cover perfectly attract readers and gives the hint of different themes like friendship, attraction, love, betrayal, one-sided-love and humour. Overall Jimmyeric Films & Media designed one more perfect cover.

SETTING: This Love story seriously runs across Kurseong, West Bengal, Delhi, Noida, and Tirrupur. Author Shivi Pandey describes brief but enough historical background of Meenakshi temple, Madurai, and the city Coimbatore.

LANGUAGE AND WRITING STYLE: Author uses quite a difficult language in the novel. Use of capital fonts does not seem good to stress words as compared to italic fonts. Author’s language Bengali’s impressions appear in his writing. Author Shivi Pandey uses first person narrative technique but it feels like reading a diary. Author elegantly avoids bold words like f**k or hell replacing dots which shows character’s frustration and anger. I see my own writing style in one to one conversation held in the novel by the young author Shivi Pandey. I like author’s imagination in one scene where he writes H I J K L M N O to mention the formula H2O.

CHARACTERISATION: Author Shivi Pandey portrays Samar Singh as the protagonist whose love story it is. The story reaches to readers through Samar’s point of view. Sayan aka Sam’s character is gracefully sketched as Samar’s friend. Samriddhi Dwivedi and Surbhi are two female protagonists in the novel. Shivi introduces Kajal as a beautiful Nepali girl. Readers meet some other characters like Rahul, Jyoti, Sapna Pradhan, Ujjwal, Miss Deepa Roy, Shekhar Tiwary, Aniket, Anup Saha, Amit Soni, Shrija and Aadhya etc while going through this love story.

PLOT: Samar’s love story begins in Kurseong where readers get some glimpses of students’ boarding life. The beginning of the first chapter bored me but it turns interesting with Samar’s humoric comments on girls and Rahul’s look. I feel fourth chapter boring again because the chapter is stretched. The scene of question paper stealing reminds me the same scene from the novel Heart of Bullets though my intention to compare both books here is not at all. The author remarks his comment on cheating in board examinations. He also remarks his sarcastic comment on educated peoples who take medicines without doctor’s prescription. ‘Freshers’ is my one of the most favorite chapters from the novel. The ending of the ninth chapter ‘Mad For You… come have a look’ touches to my heart. I like Samar’s comment on arrange marriages. The author beautifully scribbles the intimacy scene. However, I don’t understand the logic and need behind author’s experiment/theory to prove the connection of the word ASS with the names of Samar’s friends Anup Saha and Amit Soni. I don’t have any intention to extinguish Shivi Pandey or any other author from making experiments in the novel. Unique experiments are welcomed in the literature but authors should understand what kind of experiments have to be done. Humour ke liye kuchh bhi nahi chalta. The author has done one more experiment in the twelfth chapter where he relates Samar’s life events to the numerology and I would really applaud for this.

QUOTES:
1.“Past is the most gifted possession, it is something not to relent upon but to be looked upon as a process to success.”
2.“Love doesn’t come your way, you have to reach for it and even if it does, in whatever form you have to accept it.”
3.“After every worst time there comes good time and after every great time there’s a worst.”

HEART BREAKING CRITICISM: After reading two titles by Petals Publishers, I have come to one conclusion- Petals is the well-known and prestigious publisher in the industry of Hindi and English books publishing, but their editors and as a publisher Petals itself needs more hard work, put a lot of efforts and be careful to make their titles error free. I would like to note some simple printing errors from the book which could have been avoided for the improvement of the book- Rememberd (Remembered), Divedi (Dwivedi), and planed (planned) on page numbers 75, 79, and 133. After an introduction of Aadhya’s character, her name is misprinted everywhere in the whole book. Further so many punctuation marks are missing in the novel. Some words faint in the book. Though the price Rs.175/- is not too much, it becomes expensive a bit for the book having major drawbacks like this.

REVIEWER’S VERDICT: “After reading the novel, a first thought appeared in my mind was, is it a Love Story? Seriously! Aisi koi love story rehti hai? You too might have asked same question. And my answer is- No! This is not a typical love story we read everyday because this is somewhat unique, a fresh love story with humour and lot of experiments by the author Shivi Pandey. Some scenes relate to my own past life and reminds my someone close while reading the novel. Though 168 pages are not too much I feel the story stretched by the author and I think the novel could have been much better if author Shivi Pandey would have escaped some unnecessary experiments. Otherwise, Love Story? Seriously! is the good choice for one-time reading.”
I would have given more rating for the beautiful plot by the author but due to the bad editing of the book, I would give 3.5 out of 5 stars to the Love Story? Seriously! by Shivi Pandey.

Disclaimer:
The Signed Paperback copy of Love Story? Seriously! was sent to me by the author Shivi Pandey for an honest Booklysis.
This is Reviewer’s personal opinion about the book Love Story? Seriously! by Shivi Pandey and your views may be vary.

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