Swati Singh's Blog: Ars longa, vita brevis, page 2
May 9, 2025
Lights Out by Navessa Allen—Book Review
Book: Lights Out by Navessa Allen
Stars: 🌟 🌟 🌟.75/5
Review: I think the hype over booktok made me expect much. I went in expecting a blast but didn’t get one. That’s my personal view point.
It’s a good book. Funny Banter. Witty writing. Also, implores deep understanding of human character. As in why one turns out to be how they are. I really liked the spice part.
I mean your maskman kink coming to live is something all dark romance girlies think of.
But at some point, it just got about it.
The plot fell short. I mean ya there was whole Brad thing. But it was rushed. I didn’t get much of an adrenaline rush which is expected from a dark stalker
romance.
But then it is supposed to be rom com not actual dark romance so if you take that into account, it delivered enough.
A good read overall.
Things I liked:
-Josh’s personality. The dark romance usually has mmc who is invincible. However, author’s different take here was much appreciated. She made him a golden retriever energy interlaced with darkness. Vulnerable and human which I loved. The dialogues🤩
-The smut was wow. the shower scene. the punishment. okay. It had me gasping for air. The knife play was quite well written but I felt there was space for improvement in that particular scene.
-Aly’s take on vigilante. That kind of female energy is needed in the real world. I mean, you go, girl🔥
-The deeper understanding of human psyche. The familial bindings. There were short, tight sentences about these topics in the book and but damn, they were substantial.
-I kind of hoped Tyler would get a sequel. He’s kind of mysterious but in a much darker way.
Things I didn’t like:
-The plot. I think there was scope of some additions in the plot. In the middle, it just started seeming about two people exploring their fantasies. Which I’ve no problem with. But some tension, angst, plot twists. I’m a sucker for them.
Excited for Caught up.
Find the bookstagram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DH6tjnLN4c0/?img_index=5&igsh=cWwwNW53dnU1aG45
Normal People by Sally Rooney—Book Review
One of the few books everyone should read at least twice in their lives.
“It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.”
— George Eliot
I went through all of Sally Rooney’s interviews just to dive deeper into her mind—to understand her perspective beyond the book. Normal People is that kind of novel. If you hold it in your hands at midnight, you’ll find yourself staring at the ceiling, questioning everything you thought you knew about love, power, and the quiet violence of human relationships.
Reading it for the first time, the third-person narration feels distant, like a story told through glass. The novel’s psychological depth, its brutal honesty about class, peer dynamics, and the inevitability of loneliness—these can be overwhelming. If you aren’t in the right headspace, it will pull you under. I wasn’t when I first read it in 2023.
Now, in 2025, I see it differently. Have you ever felt out of place? Out of character, even to yourself? Have you known the ache of being left behind? If yes, pick this book.
Marianne:
Marianne is complex, self-effacing, and filled with contradictions. Her trauma is rooted in her home—the abuse, the neglect, the way she was treated like something fragile, always on the verge of collapse. It made her crave exactly that. She convinced herself she was cold, incapable of love, inherently wrong for not fitting in.
In her suicide note, Virginia Woolf wrote to her husband:
“If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
That’s what Marianne must feel for Connell. He is the only one she talks to. The only one who understands. He holds an infinite amount of power over her—if he asked her to die, she would.
But Marianne, to herself, is Sylvia Plath’s words:
“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.”
Imagine your brother telling you to kill yourself.
Imagine your mother dismissing it as dramatics. That was Marianne’s home. She was never loved. So when she found love in Connell, she thought: I will give anything. Be anyone. If it means he stays.
It’s necrotic. It’s freeing. To not belong to yourself, but to another. And when Connell feels just out of reach, she turns to the only thing she knows besides him—pain.
She avoids the outside world because she has too many inside her mind. And then she finds someone just as fractured. Someone who changes her. Makes her believe she could be loved. That hearing I love you is both the beginning of her life and the end of it.
Connell:
Connell is insecure—like most of us. He wants to be normal, to be accepted. To be acknowledged by society, he silences the parts of himself that hold opinions. He’s an empty vessel until Marianne enters his life, breaking him open.
He says, “You can make me do anything.” But that’s bullshit. He already wants to do those things—Marianne just gives voice to the part of him he suppresses. Maybe it started because his friends found her deviant. Maybe that was why he let himself open up to her in the first place. But what began as something degrading evolved into something sacred as he grew into a man.
His depression—the stillness—Marianne breaks through it. When he says, Maybe God made her for me, he means it.
Normal People is also about the terror of being too loved. Connell’s hold on Marianne terrifies him. He doesn’t trust himself with that kind of power. He revels in it, but to hold such authority over another soul makes him ask: What if I break her?
When he thinks he might want to hit her and knows she would let him, it’s not that he actually wants to. It’s the horror of what if? Who would save her then?
He is Sylvia Plath’s:
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
Marianne and Connell exist away from others, in a world where only they can heal and destroy each other. It is absolute, undeniable, soul-licking power that binds them as one. And in the end, no matter where Connell goes, Marianne will be on the other side, waiting.
Final Thoughts:
Normal People is about suicide, depression, abuse, identity crises, parasitism, dependency, lust, and acceptance—all of which are normal. They both see each other as sacred. But themselves, as a degradation.
This book is a mirror. The person standing in front of it doesn’t believe they are the reflection. But they are. They are normal, with every deviant thought they have.
If you’ve ever felt like this—or if you know someone who does—just pass along this book. It will leave you aching.
QOTD: How many stars did you rated this book with?🤷🏻♀️
Find the bookstagram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIBRWsazMQw/?igsh=N2x1eW82Y2ZjMnMz
What is this blog about?
Welcome to Lunara/booktaletalks Reading
Ars longa, vita brevis — art is long, life is short.
This is more than a blog — it’s a digital haven for those who find their heartbeat in words. Born from a love for stories that transcend time, this blog is where fleeting moments meet lasting meaning.
Here, you'll find:
✧ Thoughtful book reviews that go beyond the surface
✧ Personal annotations capturing what moved, stung, or stayed
✧ Guest blogs from kindred readers and creators
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Whether you're here to discover your next favorite read, explore the emotional undercurrents of a story, or simply be stirred by something honest and real — welcome. This space is for those who believe that what we create, share, and feel can echo far beyond us.
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June 9, 2022
There is beauty in vulnerability
We often talk about what a woman needs in a man, but very few of us wish to know what a man needs in a woman. A man is also a human, especially one who has been barred from emotions and inculcated to be a pillar of a household that he often forgets that he has needs, too. That he could be weak, too. Men feel too much but say too little. They tend to hide their vulnerabilities and it is so difficult for them to open up, let alone to a woman they assume they’re meant to protect. The role of a savior is often pre-designated to them. You can expect a woman to cry over petty things, but not a man. And that is so absurd.
Men have complexities, insecurities, capabilities, and weaknesses. They too have many sides, each of which needs to be respected, accepted and loved. They should be complimented and should be treated and pampered as one’s own. A woman could also be a shoulder when a man needs one.
I just want to say that there is no need to conceal yourself behind your armour. I know men have dark parts too. They have reasons for which they are addicted or the secrets that they don’t want to share. Each one of us does. It is a basic human attribute to pile up things inside you and saute it until it burns you, but it is also a human attribute to fight against it. Men need to be supported too. They have feelings, privacy and space with which they should be adorned.
If it is essential to know what a woman is going through, it is equally essential to know what a man is going through. It is necessary to sit with him in silence if he avoids certain topics. If he wishes to hold you out of the blue, maybe he needs your affection, too.
It is not always the man who needs to walk on the busy side of the road, pay for your food, massage your forehead or open the car door for you. They deserve these little things too. I know a few men who are sensitive, rarely express themselves but once they open up to you, they are small babies who need to be hugged every once in a while, love to eat whatever you cook for them, binge watch on seasons of their favourite show leaving the accounting beside, love to dance and step on one’s toes, love to bake and burn the cake in the oven. Give them time. They’re indeed the most beautiful humans when they show you who they really are, but sadly, they aren’t aware of it yet.
Pic Credits: Pinterest
June 4, 2022
Abuse
People who grew up in an abusive household will explain you well how abuse isn’t abuse anymore and you’ll find their excuses to be so convincing that abuse will hide its true character under the blanket of blindness.
There’s a girl I know. She has been brought up by people who believed that parents have the right and it is their utmost duty to take decisions for their children. This girl, I am talking about, is very impertinent and never bows down to touch feet of the people she doesn’t respect. This girl, I am talking about, is the one who points out her mother on every occasion of her incapacity to stand up for her kids and often becomes the reason for her mother's misery. She argues with her father and screams as loud as she can because she knows that people who inculcate to victimize themselves are indeed abusers to find excuses to convince themselves of being true to their deeds.
Such children when they were kids, they had a very narrow understanding of what goes on behind the doors, of what actually happened to them when someone their own touched them, of what the hand which went down their butt in a fair meant because no one taught them so. They aren’t aware of what abuse looks like because everything they ever experienced is unhealthy and that pattern became so usual that it stopped standing out for them.
When they grew into adults who actually knew the ugly part of what they assumed their happy childhood, they felt disgusted. They hated their own selves for letting that happen to them, for being quiet in the times when they should have slapped the other person around. These people, if you look closely, stay away from everyone, including the ones who might be healthy for them, because the shadows are so imprinted that they carry a darkness around them. They tend to stay away from men, from any sorts of physical affection let alone be a hug, run away whenever those silly tears escape their eyes or their heart gets attached to someone because they have a defence mechanism. It is not to let anyone close, for the close ones are the ones who made them this way. They have a heart of rock.
What I meant to say is that when you meet such people and find them overly protective, know that they do so because they had no one to protect the innocence they now look for. I hope you never but if you fall in love with such a girl, don’t love her before you understand her because a girl is much more than love. She has the right to call you out, say no or fight you if she wishes to because she never had you protecting her before, because you let her guard down, because you’re the only one who makes her vulnerable. If you don’t have the capacity of accepting her as a whole, please walk out of that door.
Pic Credits: Pinterest
Nightmare
I have been having nightmares since I was; I guess eighteen years old. I had thoughts before that as well, but they didn’t configure always in dreams. They often manifested themselves in outburst, like throwing things or crying in mid of laughing kind of outbursts that often confused the people close to me but I guess when you’re good at hiding things, you become fluent with lies, fluent to the extent that even your eyes stop telling the truth and your hands stop asking for help.
I remember the first nightmare sluggishly. It was afternoon and I had dreamt of being abducted. I was crying and panting when I woke up, though I had my mother and siblings around to put me back to sleep. At eighteen years of age, when I indeed experienced something that could rate a solid seven on the trauma scale of 10, the episodes became frequent. Often in the nights, more often in the days.
I heard my mother telling me very often that I was crying while I was asleep; I was screaming and moaning in fear and pain. My roommates told me the same when I entered college and then I realised the frequency of such nightmares was because of the things I keep sludging inside. My wounds were as fresh as the words I thought were too old to remember.
The feeling of not being heard, not being looked for, or the feeling of being a burden on most of the people, these things stayed with me. The shadows of not helping but always ruining things no matter how much I wished to be opposite or the trauma of people leaving me or me giving up on life became part of who I grew up to be and these aspects imprinted on a certain way that is hard to describe.
These are gross and some of the ugliest parts of my being and whenever I felt like talking them out, I just couldn’t. Maybe I didn’t find apt people to do so or maybe I didn’t try enough. Maybe, I don’t want to be saved because no matter how much worse my nightmares are, they’re still behind my closed eyes and yes, I wake up with me but atleast I don’t have to carry them around.
Pic Credits: Pinterest
June 3, 2022
The Man of the House
An average person lives in between the spaces. He knows that he belongs nowhere and it is liberating. It is liberating to not have walls as your home, to not have a definite place to return but some people with whom you could belong anywhere. There is happiness in gulping alcohol in glasses of chai road side, the bottle of which he steals from the shop nearby. There is happiness in having bun - maska and knowing about that from your father with a content on his face, as if he was reliving his college days when he wasn’t the man of the house and flunking classes was the only stress he had.
Something less is always something happy and I don’t mean there aren’t incidences when you don’t want luxury for say have money to pay fees of your little girl or cure his gray-haired mother who coughs a little longer but aren’t the rich ones suffering too? They are suffering.
It is just that a man with sufficient funds learns to be happy with that much. He knows that he has less, but he is the richest of all. He knows he has mouths to feed and eyes which wait for a new toy they saw their batch mates playing with, but he always acknowledges that he is bestowed. That he is bestowed with love and sacrifice, the priceless values in life.
He respects himself when he goes into the job with a bag by his shoulders, walking slowly under the steaming sun only to come back to his perspiring wife in the kitchen and believe me, that sight, the sight of his wife playing with his children and making food for them, it’s no less than godly, a prayer answered.
He has no ambitions though he wishes his life to be simple and that, my friend, is the most ambitious one can ever be. To have the love of your life, running behind the half-versions of you both, is the best possession one could have. That’s the thing about an average person. He has less, but what he isn’t aware of is that he has more, he has enough.
Pic Credits: Pinterest
June 2, 2022
Survival
Have you ever had the desire to be continually associated with something or someone? You need to keep on talking or working on some substance or idea and you don’t procrastinate things but fordo them. You have forbidden yourself to stay awake beyond midnight because it is quiet, so quiet that even your thoughts roar and you are helpless to drown in them. There are so many thoughts puzzled in your mind that songs, even in the loudest of its volume, don’t make their way to your ears. You say words unconsciously, zone out of things and never stay in one place. You need to persistently keep moving in and out because if you stop for a while, you will fade. Circumstances will go out of hands and you will harm yourself, destruct things around you and divulge in a dangerous melancholy that is all-consuming and makes you negligent towards everything else. Hence, you have to jump from one thing to another, from one person to another though these things are not exactly what you need and they still leave a bare hole but it’s better this way, this way is necessary to survive otherwise you would have given up, given up a long time ago.
Pic Credits: Pinterest
Quoted #3
I have fallen for the same soul in different bodies.
