Day Turns Dark - Sunil Sihag 'Gora' - Book Review

 

                    I have not been a fan of romantic novels. But I wanted to try out reading one for an experience. Then I did come across this book on kindle and decided to give it a try.

                    The story is set in Rajasthan involving Nitin, his friend Ronny and Harleen. Nitin is a champion cricket player and a studious boy living with his grandparents. Ronnie is his best friend who stands by him through thick and thin and Harleen is Nitin's girlfriend. The story starts with Nitin going on a suicide mission by starving himself as he could not bear his beloved grandmother's death. The story then takes us on a flashback ride into the lives of Nitin and Ronnie, their carefree life at school, their high school romance with Harleen, and the moments that lead up to grandma's death. The rest of the story deals with how Nitin recovers and strolls back to the normal self only to be riddled with more things happening in his life and his past catching up. What follows set the pace for this quick read.

                    I presumed it to be a cheesy teenage love story at the start but reading on, I could see there is more to it. The first half of the book seems to take the story at its own leisure and fun pace but post the halfway mark, the story takes you on a roller coaster ride of emotions and happenings without giving us time to contemplate. The characters are well defined. But I did find Mansi and Nitin a tad irritating. I mean the way how Nitin's thought process goes on a toss each time and the way Mansi gave an air of self-centredness even if in some distant way. Harleen and Ronnie were perfect and realistic in their approaches. The prose is simple enough for an average reader. The other characters were placed perfectly in the story. The second half had a lot of things that happened which made the read very quick as I pointed out. But I felt repetitive in some cases. I mean there was always a good thing happening which was followed by a bad thing and we get a feel of lost hope. The climax was pretty much predictive but the situation was totally different. I did not expect that particular incident to happen in that particular scene. Even though a love story, one good thing is that because of the fast pace and concurrent incidents, it always created a sort of expectation that was maintained well.

                    This book can be a good read for people who love a perfect masala filmy style story. This was my first read of the contemporary romance genre and it was interesting enough for me. This might be interesting if made into a screen adaptation.