Book Name: Just Missed!
Author Name: Himanshu Bhatia
Format: Paperback
No of Pages: 232
Publisher: Petals Publishers (1st Ed, Nov-2017)
Blurb: The blurb portion of this book has been written in a compact way highlighting the key factors of the story. With no exaggeration, it is giving the clear idea about the content that will help the reader in making a decision to opt for this book. So, it is well enough apt indeed.
Cover: Front cover design of the book is good and the blurry touch in the image of the lady (to make sense the term “missed”) made the cover unique I must say. It is complementing the title of the book completely, so a really commendable job done by Pixel R8 Studios.
Title: The title of the book (and of course it’s presenting style!) is actually though provoking and it will make the reader curious about what was there that got missed by very closely and why, most importantly, how; thus it will tempt the reader to pick this book up and turn the pages of course (this is what happened with me actually). As it is justifying the substance of the book perfectly, hence I consider this appropriate.
Language & narration: Language of the book is lucid, simple enough to comprehend for readers. There are places where the selection of Words while crafting the sentence amazed me indeed; that says in favor of the maturity in the writing style of the author. Hindi words and lines are there at place while in conversation or in description, and meaning of some of the lines are being given along with the sentence accordingly. Language is pretty much connecting (I felt as a reader), easy go, relatable conversations made the book a bit more interesting one, and most importantly, the touch of sarcastic humor that author printed in many places (where needed) in the entire book, has taken the pleasure of the reading into another level indeed! I laughed like hell while going through some of the situations or conversations (ex- “They are looking at handbags as if it was their research project…I don’t think that IITs and IIMs teach this in their ‘Strategic Management’ or ‘Procurement’ courses”). Brand names & noticeable words and lines are written in Italic fonts to emphasize them. Coming to the narrating style, it was a fast pace, profoundly descriptive narration that made the scenes literally visualizing in front of eyes while reading and making Sid as the narrator of the story instead of Shreya or Shivam, is a very clever act of the author to gain the attention of the reader, indeed. Flawless descriptions about the scenes are one of the prior plus points of the book.
Plot: Author has mixed the amalgamation of love, humor, drama, emotions perfectly with leaving no stones unturned to make the plot quite enjoyable to craft story from; even when it comes to filmy, author has imprinted a classic filmy (ditto movie scenes or daily soap drama) essence to the base plot at places and later on, the sub plots are also complementing very well to the main flow of the story and as per the theme, the story has been put to a perfect shape to finish things off in style.
Setting: The story has been set in Delhi, and as per the progress of the story, it will cover places like Gurgaon, Bangalore, Mumbai, Bangkok- Thailand, Amritsar, Goa, Chennai, Jaipur, Tirupati, Paris.
Characterization: Clear characterization is probably the top most positive point of this story. There’re a limited number of characters to keep the limelight upon and every single character in the book have been justified to their respective roles till the end. Be it the protagonist of the story or any other character, each of them carried their own significance to add to the flavor of the book. Let’s have a look at the name of the characters mentioned in the story, they are- Siddharth Gupta aka ‘Sid’, Ishaan Mittal, Nishitha Nair, Nadini, Shreya Malhotra, Neel, Simran, Priya, Anjali Nambiar, Riya Banerjee, Shivam Malhotra aka ‘Shiv’, Mihir, Mrs. Malhotra, Kanika, Mithilesh Arora aka ‘Myth’, Parul, Pulkit Chowdhury, Chhaya, Mr. Agarwal, Ritesh, Ravi, Anita, Ajay Malhotra.
Theme: Romance, Love, Friendship, Family, Filmy.
Story in a nutshell: Siddharth Gupta is a highly ambitious, strictly career oriented, focused, dedicated, principled, workaholic gentleman of very young age, working in a bank, with very impressive & successful designation, towards a highly prosperous career and personally he belongs to a evidently wealthy, rich, classy, hugely sophisticated family background. All of his family members (Parents & Sister) are working with well settled designations in their prosperous careers respectively and able to afford visibly luxurious life in personal level. Sid was an ISB alumnus and a typical “stick to Goal” boy since the beginning of his study & career, that landed him today in the position he is in where, other boy of his age can only think of. The reputation he earned through his hard work and precious time, can others only envy of, let alone achieving in his age. Sid’s success was unstoppable and so are his goals, as his current goal is to reach the level of VP in his career. He is working hard and giving every possible effort to achieve that level, because his prime pleasure is to afford and own all the branded luxurious lifestyle, high rated comforts and to reach the highest wealthy position that a person can ever afford. Due to the love for his work, left him no time to get himself a girlfriend or ‘love’ previously and he didn’t even give it a serious thought, but as his parents are insisting him to get married now as early as possible, so he finally agreed and they started searching an ideal match for their Son through matrimonial site. Though Sid was not interested in all this, but to fulfill his parent’s wish, he started meeting the “interested” girls one after another, but at the end of the day, (luckily for him) things were not going in his favor ‘cause only rejections were there to welcome him. In this condition, he came across the profile of Shreya Malhotra (a Punjabi Khatri girl), who is also a very much career focused, IIM graduate, doing exceptionally well in her working life with an envious designation and having a decent well settled family background. She is a very much practical girl, with strikingly beautiful looks, and excelled in every possible aspect in her personal life since childhood. It was like picture perfect ‘match’ for Sid, and to the most surprise, Sid had a crush on her instantly after checking out her profile, and with further face to face interactions with Shreya, he started to feel for her (beauty and personality). Shreya was started liking her, both their families were being gelled with each other as their “criteria” of marriage complemented each other perfectly and they were looking like a “Perfect Couple” “made for each other”. Families agreed to their marriage and things were going pretty smoothly between both of them, and they were heading towards to take the thing into another level.
But probably, luck had some things to say at their “smoothly going” relationship, which is why Shivam happened to Shreya, during her Bangkok trip to attend Anjali’s (one of her bestie friends) bachelorette party. Shivam was an IITian, managing his life well according to his destiny (both career & personal level), with a settled career. But in his outer approach, he is a typical guy who flirts with any random girl and tries to woo them through his cheesy lines and PJs and he almost excelled all the levels of flirting (like as a pro). It seems like as if flirting is running in his veins instead of blood. Shivam’s cheesy lines and that kind of approach to Shreya, doing nothing good for him, but only made Shreya hate him more. Things had gone really bad at a time between them that even landed slaps in the face of Shivam by Shreya.
But, nothing is predictable, at least not life… and things did not remain the same when Shreya got to know that Shivam was hiding his real self and bearing a deep chord in his past…
What happened after that? What was the past that Shivam was bearing in his chest? Why he was so spontaneous when it comes to flirting with girls? When and how Shreya discovered his facts and how this new discovery brought the changes in conception towards him? What happened to the about to happen engagement between Sid & Shreya? What impact of Shivam that turns the life upside down of Shreya & Sid? To know these answers and to know the rest of their journey, grab your copy today and go through the story by yourself.
My Verdict: Author Himanshu Bhatia has done a commendable job by portraying such beautiful love story and developed a well maintained plot by giving it life through such connectively excellent characters. Each & every element is present in the book to make any love readers hooked with it. Especially I am touched by the lovely boon between characters, whether it a bro sis relationship, or parents children relationship, friendship bond, love knots, every relationship has been presented here with the most possible realistic way, and the charm lasted till the end indeed. It has been shown that in today’s fast running career oriented generation and running after luxuries can give you settlement, position and honor that you craved for, but of course you need to pay a heavy cost for that sometimes. Ambition and love for work has been taken care of here into a different level altogether, by proving the fact that luxuries are not that easy to get hold of. Emotions are at the peak of point in the entire story, be it love, pain, jealousy, anger, heartache, everything. The dilemma of Shreya about her feelings, the mental fight of Shivam, the genuine friendship of Riya, the love of parents, the heartache from the past of both Shreya & Shivam respectively, the crave for love, the crave for higher designation, the sacrifice of Shivam, the betrayal of Kanika, the lover boy and romantic heart of Shivam, the ups and downs of phases at different times in the love trio of Sid – Shreya – Shivam; everything portrayed well evidently and finally the pictorial ending was the cherry on the cake. I really loved the story and it was a time worthy read indeed.
Recommendation: I would love to recommend this book to every love readers, romance lovers and to everyone looking forward to a refreshing light lovely read. Especially lovers should give this book a sure shot I must say.
Rating (Overall): 4/5 Stars.