Too Good To Be True

 This was one book that I had thrown myself into head first, because of the big influencer marketing it has had, and on the first page itself I felt the urge to put this book off because for the life of herself the author, Prajakta, hadn't stopped using complexitive words and uneasy expressions, which may sound good in an intellectual blog or a self-help book, but in narrating life stories, nobody uses complex language all that much, but I guess initial writing prompts are always pretty bad so I left her space for improvement, and not going to lie, she did improve her writing a good dozen in the upcoming few chapters itself. But as somebody who'd tried if not completely written a book all the way through, i still felt the lack of efforts in writing the book, the character of Avani, who is the female lead character, is basically just the girl Prajakta as a person is, or at least that's what I've thought of considering I've known her as an influencer for quite a good amount of time now. 

The writing was uneven, with bits and specks of many characters all over the book and unsensible conversations where the characters seemed too unreal, as if they almost didn't have any lives of their own and were somehow always very available for the female lead whenever and however her needs be, the secondary characters lacked personality and had almost nullified backstories, making them really hard to understand or relate to, but worse of all was how unreasonable yet somehow glorified the main characters had been written to become. If the female lead lacked uniqueness and was inspired from the author, the male lead lacked originality too, almost as if the author chose to write the male lead she had played with during her Netflix series "Mismatched" into her main character, because the same gummy boy, family angel, golden retriever that I'd seen in Rishi was the character of Aman, just older and with different ambitions, same rich family line, saw the girl once and chased her, fell in love out of the blue, dreamer, and unstopped lover who would do a lot to meet her daily, Rishi went to a whole different college and Aman bought books for his 'niece'. 

 Maybe it's only my critique catching up here so let's focus on the pro moments of the book too, for starters I loved how even with the somehow dense writing, the characters stayed legible throughout. Multiple turns, twists in the storyline, the female lead not being able to relate with her own parents, instead seeking comfort in her grandmother, Martin's fun and funky best friend behavior, the supportive friend structure and at last their couple moments, all written straight into the dream of almost every romance reader out there, the true slow burn, but quick timed storyline definitely seems to come out raw from the heart and somehow lets the reader experience the feelings most romance readers are looking out for.

At a particular point midway through the story, when the boy finally asks her to be his girlfriend, the feelings of doubt and insecurity reflect natural human feelings any person feels when getting attached to another person, her fear of attachment is something many would relate with and while it was also a little unreasonable to leave the guy hanging there for the good few weeks, her fear being reflected in procrastinating on the task showed the sheer feeling of fog and fear many go through, if not in love then in other aspects of life. While the character lacked some basic structuring like for a law student, she barely studied through the course of the book and still somehow worked around to ace in the end after reappearing once, while the story severely lacked intel on exactly what the secondary characters were up to, while the story almost completely forgot and moved on from some of the secondary characters, one can still leave scope for Prajakta's writing considering how dreamy, intimately written and well imagined her romantic moments were

All in all, the book had multiple pitfalls, cracks to fill, seals to work around, plotholes, missing characters like Meera Aunty and poorly written or described characters like Aman's father or unplanned breakthroughs like Avani's issues with her parents which never get to fully get acknowledged in the book.... One can't simply put the book high on a shelf for the romantic moments and flirty lines, although there can be hope for better considering this was just a debut novel and as she'll read more books, write more chapters, Prajakta will eventually get much better at this, as they say, "Practice makes Perfect"

My Rating: 3.7