Bridgerton 7: It’s In His Kiss - Julia Quinn (Book).

Book 41/52.

Bridgerton 7: It’s In His Kiss - Julia Quinn. 

My Rating: 4/5.

Book 7 from the Bridgerton series and I must say that the story is going strong, I was able to finish it in flat three days with two more to go before I finish the whole series and wait for S04 of Netflix adaptation, which isn’t so good in the first place. This one is the story of 8th Bridgerton kid Hyacinth, who is the fourth unmarried daughter from the family, so the target of this book is to get her hooked by the time it ends. This time, Julia decided to write a sort of thriller with a treasure hunt thrown in for good measure for the young couple to find while they fall in love, and Gareth, her fiancé, his background or lack of it, is revealed. How they fight and come out as the winner in the end is the rest of the story. I loved the way Lady Danbury plays an important role in this one, totally love her character, her nuances, especially the way she handles not only the Bridgerton kids but the general crowd, and when it comes to his Grandson, the matter is totally different. I must say Ms Quinn has a way with words and her love stories, hence this one too was a quick, pleasant read. Looking forward to reading the last two at the earliest and posting that I am planning to read even “Queen Charlotte” too from her as that will give me a better perspective on Lady D in great detail, so I hope. 

 

Bridgerton 6: When He Was Wicked - Julia Quinn (Book).

Book 40/52.

Bridgerton 6: When He Was Wicked - Julia Quinn. 

My Rating: 4/5.

Book 6 from the series, surprisingly, turns out to be amazing to read, with all the typical twists and turns of Julia Quinn’s love stories so far. This one is based on the 6th Bridgerton kid and the 3rd daughter, who hasn’t made a detailed entry in the book series, and the only bits and pieces we know of her were that she gets widowed quite soon after her marriage. This one is the detailed account of her story and the second marriage, which was predictable, even with whom it was easy to guess, but what takes the cake is how it all happens. The initial one-sided love triangle was too good and kind if given away at the very start for the reader in me to wish, predict, and slightly later actually pray to make it work, but all that doesn't go that easily as it sounds here and was totally gripping, exciting and lovely to read. But I must say that as the series is progressing, Ms Quinn has started losing the steam for sure, or maybe I wasn’t able to like the character of Francesca that much as I loved her other earlier siblings with their stories. Frannie has the quirks of Eloise, her elder sister, and a few similarities with her eldest sister Daphne, too, and that is where it was hard for me to differentiate her from them; nonetheless, a beautiful love story at the end of the day. Now I am curious to know how the Author is going to do justice to the last two siblings in the upcoming two books. 

Undoubtedly, this is the longest that I have hung on to a book series and still looking forward to reading the rest, hope they work for me though. Do let me know if you have a personal favourite, Julia Quinn, too. 

 

The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman (Book & Movie).

Book 39/52.

The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman. 

My Rating: 4/5. 

My daughter ordered this book a few months ago, to my pleasant surprise, as she knows how to make me happy by reading a few books a month. And I never say no to books, even after having a huge collection of 500+ at my place, new additions are always welcome. Later, I came to know that this was picked up for a movie adaptation with Pierce Brosnan (Ron), Helen Mirren (Elizabeth) and Ben Kingsley (Ibrahim) & and Jonathan Percy (Stephen Elisabeth’s husband)  in the lead, playing the retired folks staying in a plush old age home peacefully. As a hobby, they start a Thursday Murder Club where they discuss and try to solve a few unsolved murders. What was so interesting about this whole book and story is the way it is written, first from the perspective of a Murder Club member, Joyce, who is writing her diary and second from a third-party angle, where we read the goings on of the cat and mouse chase game with the police angle too. I actually didn’t expect it to be this good, being the debut book of the Author, but now I am sure that he is one to be watched out for, as there are two more that he has written after this one. All four members of Murder Club are above 70 or 80 as they claim, but the way they work and especially the way the author discloses their background in bits and pieces, is terrific. Like the way, at one point he discloses that Elisabeth still holds a valid license as a Tank driver, go figure what is she going to do in the story. The story takes a twisty turn as the Owner of the old age home decides to expand his footprint by taking over a cemetery next to his property, by transferring it to some other place. His partner gets killed in the meantime, and all the doubts fall on him as he is the one who would gain more by his death. One murder follows another, and before we know it, dead bodies start cropping up from the past, too. Murder club works in tandem with the cops; you’ve got to read the book to know how they persuade or blackmail each other to help. It was hilarious. The entire book (380+ pages) is so intriguing and unputdownable that I believe I finished it in flat 3 sittings, and now I need to catch the movie at the earliest to see if they have done any justice to the lovely book. 

Do let me know if you have read this one or any other works of Richard. I am going to read all his other books now for sure. 

Movie: I had to watch the movie as soon as I finished the book, of course, for the amazing casting and especially when it is directed by Chris Columbus, aka Harry Potter fame. If a movie can put a smile on my face, it is worth it, I would say, and this was no exception. Although they did change it a little bit here and there, as 2 hours cannot do justice to a 380-page book, I am super happy that they didn’t take away much from it, and the end product is pretty charming, just like the book and a treat to watch. Although they did change the murderer on the grounds of so much detailing that they couldn’t do, unlike the book, where the writer had all the time in the world to twist and turn. But one good reason to still like it is that we get to watch some of my favourite people in one movie, which was totally amazing, especially the four leads, they were simply terrific, and they were a perfect fit for the characters they were playing. If the book was a four-star for me, the movie is definitely a 3/5, and I am planning to watch it again with wifey tonight, as she loves murder mysteries, so I need to check if she can catch the killer before the movie ends. And now I will have to wait for its sequel to come as and when that happens, and have to order books number two and three at the earliest. 

 

The Autumn of the Patriarch - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Book).

Book 38/52.

The Autumn of the Patriarch - Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

My Rating: 3/5 (Being Generous).

1982 Nobel Prize for literature winner GGM is one of my all-time favourite Authors and I try to read at least one book a year from him and not more because he has hardly written 15 (Novels and Novellas included) and I haven’t picked up a single one of his non-fictions so far, so I have no idea how good they must be. All his works are originally in Spanish, later translated into various languages, but the way they have turned out to be amazing, surreal beauties, it is hard to say they lose anything during translations. This was no exception on that ground, the whole background, the unnamed country and the kingdom of the patriarch is so amazingly detailed that I was totally hooked to it. What didn’t work for me this time was the prose without a sentence break, or paragraph break or even chapter break. The whole 230 odd pages are written without break, non stop at breakneck pace, even while the whole story of the patriarch’s mysterios death in the very first page is narrated six times with different perspectives by different people to a General who is enquiring about the happenings in company with an Archbishop, it is done in first person order with no quotes as who is saying what. That was very tiring to read as I had to go back again and again to check where the first person stopped and where the other parties started talking :). And the story of the cunning patriarch is totally unbelievable (of course it's fiction) as he lives to an age of 232 years and has witnessed the Hailey’s comet some 3 odd times, he himself loses count of how many times. He had fathered some 5000 children, and please don’t ask about how many concubines he must have; one of them was his so-called wife and the heir she gave him. I just can’t explain. For that matter, how he comes down to become a king when his mother (a bird woman) doesn’t even know who his father was, just that he was born with no lines in his hands and he was destined to be a king right from his birth, and oh! Before I forget, his mother birthed him in a standing position. I wonder why we need all those details. It is beyond my imagination, and now that Mr. GGM is no more, no one can answer our questions. 

Beautifule is the way he has captured the entire sequence of Patriach’s mother’s death, right when I was about to question his age vis-a-vis his mothers age, he decides to kill her and then follows it with one heck of an amazing burial ceremony, One has to read the book to go through the entire amazing sequence and the beautiful way it all is captured and explained, I could imagine those visuals right in front of my eyes while reading his amazing prose (again without break). On top of all that above, there are so many instances that were very hard for me to digest in the GGM book; one case was of a courtier from the King’s court who gets drunk and starts pissing right in the centre of the entire court. And then there is this General that the Patriarch doesn’t like for some reason, so he gets him cooked in his full attire and serves his guests in one fine dinner. People do make faces, but I assume they all enjoy the feast. And then there is this third gentleman who had fathered a son with his own mother. I believe I have read the majority of his works; they have their own kind of grimness and gruesomeness, but this one takes the cake from all of them. I still remember the guy from one of his books, “Chronicles of a Death Foretold”, where he kills someone and moves with his machete still dripping blood in one hand while the other holds the head of the dead person. I couldn’t take that image out of my mind for the last decade or more that I have been reading the story. I still haven’t forgotten the surreal beauty that he had described in the beautiful (yet challenging) “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, where one loses count of characters and the family tree of the protagonist. Or the melancholy love story in “Love in the Time of Cholera” and its heartbreaking ending. But this one is totally different from them all. I am sure Mr. GGM must be smoking some fine Colombian hash while writing this, but still, it was a challenging yet very intriguing read. 

I love his on your face, give a damn stories and the choice of words that he uses to describe his characters or even the way they talk, totally out of this world stuff yet very engaging to read. I wish he had written a lot more, but then we won't be reading his books on repeat, won't we? Do let me know if you have read this one and liked it, or if you have a personal favourite from Gabo. Mine will always be a tie before Chronicles of Death and Love in the time of cholera for sure. 

Love and Hot Chicken - Mary Liza Hartong (Book).

Book 37/52.

Love and Hot Chicken - Mary Liza Hartong.

My Rating: 2/5.

I got this book from a friend who was returning to India from the USA for vacation, and we were supposed to catch up in Bangalore. Usually these days I ask my foreign friends to get me books from their respective countries, Authors of their choice and this was one of the cases where my friend's choice didn't work one bit for me. Although I love the way she has written on the first page of the book “From JFK to Pune” :) with a date stamp. I guess she picked it up, going by the title, as this turns out to be a Lesbian love story, the protagonist is going through a recent loss of her father, moves back to her hometown town and for no reason sticks back, leaving her PhD halfway. On top of that, she starts working in a local eatery, a chicken shack, as going by the title, and that's where she meets her partner. Coincidentally, her best friend is a gay guy, who is almost like a brother she never had. The Chicken Shack owner suddenly decides to have an Employee Beauty Pageant, and the final prize is supposed to be $1ML can you believe that? Unfortunately, the characters are so underdeveloped that I could feel nothing for no one in particular, and there is no solid reason for anyone to do what they were doing in their sleepy old town. Neither is there much talk of mouthwatering food nor any heart-touching story to tell of the people around. I was surprised to read that the lead was doing her PhD when the tragedy struck, but the way her story goes forward and backwards, I guess she never grows beyond a teenager and shockingly, her mother too finds a partner at the blink of an eye. On top of that, the ending was so predictable that I could guess it by the time the book reached the halfway mark. I was almost on the verge of DNFing this one as the first of the year so far, but since this was a gift, I kept going and finished it. I was looking forward to picking up a same sex story for quite a while, but this one turns out to be a turn-off on that aspect too. 

 If you haven’t come across this one, I suggest you stay away if it comes your way, but if you have read and loved it, forgive me, please.