Tag Archives: The Backbenchers

Finding Juliet by Toffee

Finding Juliet by Toffee


BLURB

Arjun is a sweet, simple guy who is so unlucky in love that he almost lets go of life. Enter his saviour Krish, who turns him into an irresistible flirt, making his life more colourful. But will he find true happiness or has he lost that opportunity?

Join Arjun as he tries to figure out women and discovers the meaning of love, lust and life.. all in his journey of Finding Juliet

REVIEW

Image result for 4 star rating

Definitely a book to spend an evening with! ‘Finding Juliet’ is book for train journeys. Indeed I completed it during my train travel.

I believe youngsters will relate to Arjun and keep turning pages till they reach the end. Engrossing. Indeed, the writer pulled of a Durjoy Dutta in the initial chapters. It reminded me of ‘The Backbenchers’ series.

Finding Juliet by Toffee Review
Finding Juliet by Toffee Book Review

DROPS FRAMEWORK FOR FICTION – Created by Smit Kothari D=Detailing to work R=Realistic weaving of the fiction O=Organized or structured story line P=Plot and Characters S=Story telling Book Review : Finding Juliet

D = Detailing to work.  Score : 3/5

Arjun turns from an ordinary guy to a cool, irresistible flirt. His conversion to flirt is described in great detail. The chapter ‘enlightenment’, based on Krish’s advice on women to Arjun, is beautifully written. The author’s choice of words tell us how he understands women psychology deeply. The core of the book – Arjun’s personality change and dilemma of love, lust and life – is discussed in great depth.

R = Realistic weaving of the fiction.  Score : 3.5/5

The story is set in Hyderabad and Bangalore mostly. Use of places like Charminar, Hussain Sagar lake, pubs, shopping and dining places fits well to the storyline. The bomb blasts also add an interesting element to the story. These small patches of real details add essence to this fiction drama. In fact every guy can relate to the lead character Arjun.

O = Organized.  Score : 4/5

Organized in 2 acts, the story gives us two different Arjun – the geek and the flirt. But we are what we are. A drastic change may temporarily be welcomed, but then you start missing your old self. The sequence of events and flow of emotions go well with the story. Anjali, Arjun’s childhood friend, stays through the entire plot and keeps returning at the right moments.

P = Plot and Characters. Score : 4/5

Friends, True Friends, Girlfriends, Crush, Mentor – Characters are lively. Amazing how these simple characters have weaved a story so real. Almost everyone has a true female friend, childhood friends, college friends and colleagues. Connect with each of these set of friends is different. One can totally relate these strong connections between the characters.

Distinctively, you also realize in the story how you lose friends with time – some gets filtered, some voluntarily leaves and some by circumstances. But true ones remain there, irrespective of time.

S = Story Telling. Score = 4.5/5

Dialogues, description, monologue and lyrics – so perfect that I would love to keep some of those in my Goodreads quote section. One can relate to every statement made on love, lust and life- as if taken from your heart and put in the book.

“Maybe there is some insane pleasure in self-destruction and hitting rock bottom because once you reach there, you can only go up.”

“Behind every person there lies a story which makes them what they are. Many a time, the story isn’t known to anybody.”

And some simple, touching lines

I can see your face,
But I can’t see you anymore.
I can look into your eyes,
But I can’t read them anymore.
You hold my hand,
But I don’t feel the love anymore.
You touch my body,
but you don’t touch my soul anymore.

All I can say is I completed this book in one go and it was great to spend an evening musing over this book.

Thank you writersmelon.com and Toffee for this book.

The Missed Call ( The Backbenchers, #2 )


The Missed Call by Sidharth Oberoi
The BackBenchers

Author : Siddharth Oberoi

Genre   : Fiction, Urban life

Ratings: 2 of 5 stars false

Story in Author’s words:

Natasha, the heartthrob of The Presidency Convent, lost her stardom, her pride and her boyfriend overnight, with no idea what hit her. But she does have her suspicions, namely — Ananya.

She is not going to take her downfall lying down. And now that she has her hands upon something that can ruin Ananya’s life, she can’t wait to have her revenge.

Meanwhile, Shreya stays at a distance, and sees Natasha destroy herself in hatred, revenge and pain. It aches her to see her once-upon-a-time best friend throw her life away like this. But what can she do about it?

The Backbenchers – The Missed Call traces the story of Natasha Malhotra as she struggles with depression, vengeance and the loss of social equity. Will she get her old life back? Or will she destroy herself?

my review:

Why I should read this book is a difficult question to answer; More difficult to answer will be the regular jibes that will prompt out on my desktop commenting: “if  ‘The Extra Class’ wasn’t enough, Smit wants to add an extra book to his ‘read’ shelf too quickly.” After reading mind boggling thrillers like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or heart touching ‘a quiver full of arrows’, one needs to take a little bit of rest.But ‘rest from reading’ is something which I loathe more than myself.So in such course of time, I prefer to read books of such genres.In layman’s language, light reading is always necessary.Nobody can continue on with thrillers and heart chillers forever.A bit change of genre or switching  to Layman’s so called ‘light reading’ does seem to be an obvious choice.And why should it not be?

 

Siddharth Oberoi possesses a special charm when it comes to simplicity and lucidity.It is not always important to present the content in a rhetorical way.The simpler,the better.I would always recommend ‘The Backbenchers series’ as the best one to start with; infact, the best book for novices.Completing the sequel, my mind as a critic was continuously gathering up the content and was able to brief it far shorter than any book with 200+ pages would provide a gist of.Is it so that the genre of teenage faces  paucity of ideas ? There was hardly any change well distinguished from the previous one, except the concept of forgivenesswell woven by Oberoi.

If a rotten mango can spoil the lot, why can’t a juicy one transform the rotten ones to ripen? Well, if that’s not possible in mangoes, it does in Oberoi’s teenage fiction.It’s just an old convention to bring the villain to defeating edge at the end.

Rarely does it happen that villains transform to heroes, but Oberoi brings that change in this book.Other than the concept of forgiveness, there is nothing that can touch the readers. 

About The Author
Sidharth Oberoi is a pseudonym. The Backbenchers series is written by writers Sachin Garg and Durjoy Datta, from the Grapevine India community.

The Backbenchers-The Extra Class


The Backbenchers-The Extra Class

 

The Backbenchers by Sidharth Oberoi
The BackBenchers series #1

 

Author: Sidharth Oberoi

MY RATING : 3/5 

Ananya’s father moves from Raipur to Delhi so does ananya. Ananya , a 12th grade student,topper and popular student in her old school,suddenly finds herself  an awkward at her new school-the school where teachers are the puppets in the hands of students.When in Rome, be Romans. She changes her physical appearance.with skirts shorter, shirts tighter and stylish hair,she tries to establish her position among the presidency girls and boys.But changing the physical appearance is not all enough.With new challenges,love and friendship,and of course rivalry, Ananya  transforms herself into a Delhi girl. Will she be able to tackle them all?

A fresh story with few of the old ideas, shown frequently in serials on channel V or Mtv – its just another book that revolves around teenage period and desires.The book begins well, presenting the dark side of the rich spoiled brats of metropolitan cities but fails to cover all the areas.It concentrates on the teen period, teenage crushes and love throughout the book.Written lucidly and presented in the simplest way, the book fuses the emotions of friendship, teenage love and desires.The lust and flaunt of the teenage are the villains that keeps the reader going through with the book.Overall, any college youth would like the story as it resembles a lot with their life.

 Related article :

The Missed Call- The BackBenchers #2