1343th Day
138th Blog Post
18th BookLysis
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.
Read my previous Booklysis of Petals Publisher’s book:
Heart of Bullets by Nikhil Kushwaha
(Rating: 3.8*/5, 4 Comments and 33150 Visits; Buy from Amazon | Flipkart)
BOOKLYSIS of Love Story? Seriously! By Shivi Pandey
Copies of Love Story? Seriously!
Title: Love Story? Seriously!
Author: SHIVI PANDEY
Published by: PETALS PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
Publisher: Harpreet Makkar
Cover by: JIMMYERIC FILMS & MEDIA™
Copyright: © Shivi Pandey
First Edition: January 2016
ISBN (13): 978-93-85440-14-4
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 168 (excluding cover)
Price: Rs 175/- (incl. all taxes)
My Rating: *½ out of 5 stars.
Reviewed by: RAJESH D. HAJARE (RDH)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Shivi Pandey
SHIVI PANDEY was born in Patna on 22nd April 1993 and grew up in West Bengal. In his early childhood, he was admitted to a boarding school. He passed his ICSE examinations in 2009 from Himali Boarding School located in Kurseong, Darjeeling.
He is a jovial, carefree and fun loving person. He is also a source of motivation for his friends sometimes. Ever since his childhood he has been an avid reader which motivated him to focus his expressions and pen it down. It is not only his hobby but also his passion to write. His poem was published in “Kritika” the college magazine which gave him focus to write.
He is an engineer graduated in 2015. April from KIIT UNIVERSITY. His self-belief and selfless attitude are just few good points about him. He firmly believes that not quantity but the quality matters and does not discriminate between people but skill. Currently, he lives in Kolkata and works for COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS.
Cover of Love Story? Seriously!
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.
Youtube Trailer of Love Story? Seriously! (©HalfMoon Creations and Shivi Pandey)
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:
“Past is the most gifted possession, it is something not to relent upon but to be looked upon as a process to success.”
“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.”
“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.
OVERVIEW of Love Story? Seriously!
Trailer of Love Story? Seriously! (©Aryan Saha)
The sanguine sun is just preparing to slumber and the filtered glare from striking the scene makes it even more alluring. The flock of birds are moving together in a v shaped structure and it looks as if they are returning to their home after a long tedious day’s hard work. The fact that they are all together in every aspect of life brings strength and calmness to my dilapidating heart. It is even more mesmerizing to find the three best people of my life beside me.
SAMAR: The epitome of the story, takes you on an amazing voyage of his life. He recalls his friends and all his unsuccessful love interests – Sapna, Samriddhi & Surbhi.
What happens when you fall in love? What happens when you fall out of it? What happens when you are unwanted? What happens when you are cheated ad still coined a cheater? Can there be a reason to not like someone? Can there always be a reason to like someone? Explore answers to all these questions along with Samar on his journey in search of true love.
It brings you, yet another unconventional love story of all times. The author intends to bring about the fact that can this also be a love story and leaves the readers to decide enquiring them Love Story? Seriously!
We would love to connect with you…
Goodreads: LSS | Shivi Pandey | Rajesh Hajare
Facebook Profile: Shivi Pandey| Harpreet Makkar | Rajesh D. Hajare
Facebook Page: Shivi Pandey | Petals Publishers | RDH Sir | LSS
Twitter: @ShiviPandey1 | @RDHSir | @Harpreet_Petals
Website: Shivi Pandey (linkedIn) | Petals Publishers
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.
Glance on my Book Shelf:
- Reading now: KLASS by Prita Yadav (Buy from Amazon)
- Books Reading Soon:
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Loved the new way of mentioning character names instead of the linear approach. This feels more natural. :). Nice review as always, Rajesh. :)
ReplyDeleteIts really great sir
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice review
I read the review just now. Detailed and informative as usual
Is it a review ?
ReplyDeleteImprove den
And his novel is not that good.mere piece of shit
4 stars ?
Na i din't like the review
First of all I want to say that I like the cover page of ‘Love Story? Seriously!’ by Shivi Pandey very very much. The variation of colors used in the front cover and the different styles of writing some particular alphabets perfectly goes with the various shades of the story. So, I must say that the cover design is more than perfect! The languages the author used in this novel is OK, but I can say that it could have been more lucid. All characters are defined smoothly in this novel. Sir, in the ‘Plot’ section, you’ve exactly pointed out that one can’t do any experiment to bring humor. Experiments should be done in writing, no issue, but not excluding the limits. I clearly agree with you Sir. Printing errors in novels are very irritating indeed Sir. Misspell of some words, punctuation missing is major drawbacks of this novel. Publishers, editors have to do much better work than this. You’ve done a correct, accurate, perfect observation sir. Hat’s off to you. I’ll recommend this book to all. This is a fresh bold and unique novel. 3.5 stars to this book is quite good rating Sir. Very good Sir. Keep it up. I’m with you.
ReplyDeleteI read it .. it was good
ReplyDelete@Surbhi Sareen,
ReplyDeleteIts really feels good to hear from YOU.. One of MY favourite reviewers.. ☺☺☺