Title : She’s One of Those
Author : Shashank Kumar
Review of She’s One of Those by Shashank Kumar
As the blurb of the book goes : “Ashutosh is a great student never known to lose a battle in life. He quits engineering to pursue his dreams of becoming a blues phenomenon. Ruhi, his Delhi love, hates his move but shifts to Bangalore just for his sake. But, she never moves in. Instead, Juhi, her elder sister of a law student, with her nearly settled life and a fiancé, patronises her in.
Ashutosh needs a new house where loud guitars are barely an issue. Also somewhere, he can cast aside the ghosts of his ex-girlfriend, Nadia. Mehek, Juhi’s colleague needs that house too. They end up sharing it. But Mehek never tells him of how she knows his girls all too well and neither do the sisters know about how she could be a blessing in disguise for the hapless guitarist.
One bad move and Ruhi might end up in the lap of her family-approved, ISI marked, calvousdial tone of a dentist who moved for a job to Bangalore too. Juhi hates the dentist, but hates Ashutosh even more. Will Ruhi ever give Ashutosh the support he deserves in his tough journey or just play her wicked games all over again?”
My View :
Initially, it felt like author’s opinion or frustration about different things that pinned him is being poured out in this book, but later on,as I moved ahead with this book, his opinion kept on popping in between the stories at many places. Although he shares his experiences about the different facets of life,but he has gone through them quite humorously.At first, I didn’t get where the story is heading towards,the flow which is required to encapsulate reader’s attention is somewhat missing,the rope that ties reader from the story is somewhat loosened.
The story started from 17th page( quite strange to find that numbering of pages is not done in the book) where the ‘she’ from ‘She’s one of Those’ arrived,that’s how I felt,but I was wrong.The story kept on tracing the life’s edges of Ashutosh which includes Ruhi.The book becomes a bit engaging in the middle half,fillers were missing, and the story was running quite smoothly on the track, without being interrupted by anything.
Author posses strong command on language ,I like the manner in which he tries to communicate with reader,connecting the chord of hearts.Author has a way of conveying his message artistically, he could easily pour out his heart adding humour to it,the only thing author needs to add is a good story-line which would do the trick of creating a healthy and interesting book.
I don’t know why and from where the fillers come in between as author’s frustration about something or other.Okay,the frustration seems fine to me,and the content is also good, but I couldn’t understand what role does that play in the story.At times, the story left reader wandering, as on which track it is running, the sudden change of track without any prior innuendo left reader confused.The narration needs to be more reader friendly in order to gain attention and interest.
Rating : 3/5
Reviewer : Shweta Kesari