Sahil | One and a Half Minutes

Blurb View:

Everyone has secrets . . . but is hers the most shocking? Orphaned at birth, seventeen-year-old Sahil has always blamed himself for his parents’ death. He has little interest in life until he meets the enigmatic Anya in a chance encounter during the Shimla fest. Soon he falls head over heels in love with her, but Anya doesn’t reciprocate his feelings.
An accident leaves him in a coma and when he wakes up he makes a startling discovery-he can read minds! Now he can find out what goes on in Anya’s mind and maybe, just maybe, make her fall in love with him. But is Anya all she seems? Or is she hiding something?
Deliciously plotted, full of morbid secrets and startling revelations, Secretly Yours will make you question what you see and who you trust.

Review:

Secretly Yours is a romantic thriller with other elements as well. The first attraction of the book is surely the cover. Wonderfully designed, it is sure to catch the eye and that’s one of the reasons I picked this one. The blurb promises a love story and the book starts off on such a note. We meet Sahil, a teenager plagued with more problems in life than teenagers should ideally have. He’s an orphan and is blamed by his grandmother for his parents’ death. You bet that’s way too much to be handled by a young boy. He takes refute in alcohol and bruising himself. His passion for music, however, keeps him alive. And then he meets a pair of eyes that entice him as well as baffle him. As luck would have it, Anya enters his life and everything turns topsy-turvy.

What happens next? Sahil meets an accident, loses his grandmother and gains Anya. Or does he? Anya has a bagful of secrets that get uncovered over the second half of the book. I can’t give away her secrets as spoilers and hence, you have pick up the book.

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Image Courtesy: Amazon

Blurb View:

This is not your typical boy-meets-girl story. Okay, they do meet, but there are some complications. Trish is twenty-eight. She’s unemployed, overweight, single and snarky. She knows all that. And if one more person – just one more person – tries to fix her, she might explode. Sahil is thirty-five. He has superpowers. Well, kind of. He seems to think so, anyway. He’s also hot (in a geeky kind of way, but still). And he plays the guitar, helps the underprivileged and talks about his feelings. Aren’t guys like that supposed to exist only in fantasies? When Trish and Sahil meet, magic happens. Real magic, you know, like fireworks, electricity, that sort of thing. But here’s the problem. Trish doesn’t want anyone in her life. She has enough to deal with – dependent parents, flaky neighbours, bitchy editors, the works. And yet, Sahil is determined to be in her life. From the bestselling author of Just Married, Please Excuse and Sorting Out Sid, here is another zinger of a book.

Review:

Yashodhara Lal is three books old and I’ve read two of them. Much liked ‘Sorting Out Sid’ and picked up this one so that I could read about more such people. This book is about Trish, and she’s completely different from what Sid was. It’s her story, and a strong one, where Trish owns her life.

Trish is fat. She loses her job and opts for freelance. I began reading the book and realised these familiar traits. It becomes easier to identify with the character once you find things similar. But Trish is much more than what I am and I loved the character. The story begins with her woes – career, an ailing parent, her obesity which is the cause of much concern for her friend Akansha and her mother – the list goes quite long. It’s a lone battle against life and things are made easier with loads of humour. Enter Sahil too, though not in a typical boy-meets-girl manner.

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