Title : Maya
Author : Pooja Agrawal
Blurb : Unfold pages to open mystery,
Which usually create chilling history.
As you open one by one each page,
You will get to form clear image.
Sometime give smile on face,
Sometime make cry when trace.
It may be pleasant for a while,
Feel without this you are not alive.
Is this just a mere feeling,
That obsession is always healing.
Cannot understand what to do,
Just help me to move it through.
If you really cannot put down,
This is the place where your heart will pound.
You will imagine sheer beauty around,
This chilling mystery of MAYA…..
Will help you to understand different notes of trauma.
My View : The first thing that caught my attention is the blurb presented in poetic form. It was precise and gives a brief on the plot in an approaching manner. The story promises to bring light on the concept of obsession and love. If one couldn’t grasp the brief from the poetic blurb, an elaborated note is presented in the beginning which tells what author has in store for readers.
The story traces out the edgy paths of the protagonist’s life very-well in the beginning that it felt like story would definitely have something different for readers.The series of events happening, one after another different turns in protagonist’s life gears reader for the journey.But the journey takes a halt when it reaches to station 13.
From chapter 13 events seems to be stretched unnecessarily and fruitless.Authoress wanted to focus light on Maya’s past life giving readers a sneak peak of her college life.But the incidents and the conversations involved doesn’t make sense at all.It doesn’t play major role in order to complete the story.Where authoress was pacing with great speed in the beginning outlining the incidents, the pace slowed down when the journey reaches at chapter 13.And then again, it came back to life after couple of chapters, when story again came to travel on present track.
At one place she has mentioned that the trip to Lakshwadeep was planned for the new year Eve and in the very next chapter they left for the trip on 29th of Sept.Such minor mistakes takes away the essence of reality from the story.And there are many hindrances in the journey which comes under the part of editing like grammatical errors, misplaced words and spelling errors.
It felt like authoress turned the situations as she wanted to at any cost.As a result, most of the events doesn’t look natural and real.At places, unnecessary and unwanted details are fed to readers which in turn snatches the charm of the story.For example, Geography of Lakshwadeep Island in the first paragraph itself and the details of Imperial College in chapter 13.
Authoress has a good storyline in mind and she covered the story with the series of interesting and curvy episodes but the way she has presented her thoughts doesn’t strike the chord.To some extent, it was easy to predict what would happen next, and it occurred like broken pieces of other stories are taken and used to make a different story.
What more charmed me in this book is the aesthetic poems that would help readers in every next step to relate with the situation.Her poems very-well paints the ingredients of the exemplar’s heart.They are simple, beautiful, and at the same heart-warming.Just the way she has adorned the blurb with a poem, the story is adorned with poems at every new facet.
Overall, the story doesn’t make delightful impression on reader’s mind,but I would state it as a light read.
Rating : 2.7/5
Reviewer : Shweta Kesari