Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 Queen of Dreams  By Chitra Divakaruni  Published Year  : 2004 Page Count: 307 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Magical Realism, Mystical, Fiction, Drama, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 👍👍👍👍 The main character, Rakhi, runs a confectionery store in California in 2001. She is also a vocational painter and sells her art at galleries. Since her childhood, she has tried to decipher her mother's enigmatic secrets and become more like her. Her mother has a talent of dream telling. She has the gift of dreaming on the behalf of others and helping them in the process. She tells them what steps to take and how to avoid mishaps in their way. Rakhi has coveted this gift but clearly she doesn't have it. Her father has always been a reclusive drinker who kept his distance and spent his time singing old hindi songs. Rakhi is divorced and has a very young daughter to care. Her friend, Belle, is sweet and very considerate of her needs. Belle is...

 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (INHERITANCE TRIOLOGY #1) by N.K.Jemisin  Published Year: 2010 Page Count: 329 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre: High Fantasy, Gods, Adventure, Drama, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 🌟 😎 😀 🥰 I absolutely loved this. The writing is clear. I am drawn into her story like a moth to a flame. I start reading and find myself unable to stop. I think it will be easy to put it down but it won't. Jemisin writes like magic! And there is so much embedded within the lines  .. a hallmark of her writing style i feel .. that I would read for a while and back it all up in memory before moving further. In my first reading, I didn't understand certain aspects of the story. I had many questions and I felt it is riddled with many holes. I thought the answers might be there in a Wikipedia summary section .. but I was only let down there. I spent much time in introspection and rehashing the different tidbits from memory. At last, most is clear to me...

 Children of Memory  (Children of Time #3) By Adrian Tchaikovsky  Published Year: 2022 Page Count : 364 pages  Medium Used : Kindle PW  Genre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Evolution, Multicultural Species, Adventure, Drama, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 With this read, I complete all the published books in the series, Children of Time . I adore the writing and the content put out by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I have turned one of his staunch supporters after reading this series. I like the way his mind works. This book like the former two have a common history to build upon. There is a stunning and shocking twist towards the climax which added a lot of sense in retrospect. Who are these children of memory? How can there be children from memory? Was that memory even real in the first place?  Human beings haven't found intelligent life anywhere in their centuries spanning search. They decide to find and identify Earth like planets and then terraform them...

 Lessons in Chemistry  By Bonnie Garmus  Published Year : 2022 Page Count : 386 pages  Medium Used : Paperback  Genre: Scientists, Drama, Romance, Contemporary Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 1.75/5 👍👍 I am giving such a low rating because this book, I felt, is superbly overhyped. I was bored out of my mind. I was dragging myself to read because I happened to buy the paperback. I felt incredulous at several moments. The main character, Elizabeth Zott, gets away with most of her actions with impunity. And if she says or does half of the things, now, she did back in the 1960s backdrop of the story, she would get brutally trashed and massacred. But, hey, where ever she goes, she has her share of idolizers/fans and sympathizers. She doesn't come off as a real person. Over bloated with self importance and snobbish, to say the least. I hated her character so much that I wished upon wished when the narrative will end. I became apathetic to Elizabeth or any of the ...

 The Last Mrs.Parrish  by Liv Constantine  ( Mrs.Parrish #1 ) National Best Seller Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick.  Published Year : 2017  Page Count: 395 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre: Suspense, Drama, Young Adult, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 👍👍👍👍 Some part of the story is narrated by a third person. Some of it is first person narrative of the last Mrs. Parrish, Daphne. It puts the reader on the edge. The writing is gripping and also the mind/thought process of Amber is so villainous and cut throat like that it made me not feel sympathy for her predicament towards the end. This book is well written, well thought through. It hit me how similar this story is to The Housemaid by Freida McFadden but checking up on the dates of publishing cleared ny suspicions a bit. While this book came out first in 2017, the Housemaid was out in 2022, so there was no way the authors might have snatched a bit of storyline from the other book!  A very...

 The River of No Return  (River of No Return #1)  By Bee Ridgway  Published Year: 2013 Page Count: 497 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Adventure, Historical Fiction, Time Travel, Magic, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 2.5/5 👍👍👍👍 I think the writing is superior and better than many other books I have given a rating of 4 but there are some things that still aren't clear for me. I mean, it involves time travel and the characters say they rely on emotions to jump but how do they do it? I mean, what is this jumping using emotions? And there are two factions fighting through the history/river of time - the Guild and the Ofan. There is lot of confusion,for me, as to what each group wants and represents. There is no line between what they each want to do with time or the river? One group wants to preserve the history and so as the other group - barring a mild experimentation? What kind of experimentation? Do we get more cl...

 The Long Earth  (The Long Earth #1) By Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter  Published Year : 2012  Page Count: 421 pages   Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sociology, Multiverse, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 👍👍👍👍👍 Disclaimer: Some Spoilers ahead!!  Parallel worlds .. uninhabited, endless Earths that are for the taking by any asker .. more Earths than there are people on Datum Earth .. a heavenly Paradise!!  I thoroughly enjoyed this amazing product from the minds of two brilliant authors - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I just wrapped it up and am yearning for more of Long Earth. Luckily, I have the next book from the series sitting on my table, right next to me.  The Long Earth is a term used to refer to all the numerous parallel world Earths that could be reached by stepping either to the left or right. Some people are gifted with natural stepping ability while others need a special mechanical device. T...

 The Tombs of Atuan  (The Earthsea Cycle #2) By Ursula K. Leguin  Published Year: 1970 Page Count: 141 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : High Fantasy, Gods, Sorcerers, Magic, Old Powers, Adventure, 2024-read.  Rating : 4.5/5  Her words are magic. Her writing is splendid. It is very evocative and creative of the world she wants us to be transported into. She has a lucid imagination and a skill of writing to convey it. I absolutely loved Tenar, the girl heroine of the book who is both vulnerable, naive, trusting and commanding at the same time. She is the light that has been kept ensnared in darkness until her rescuer comes. And Ged - I absolutely respect him. He is a man of conscience and convictions and principles. Most of all, he is a man of his word. He has shown immense respect and delicacy to a girl in a time when it is a rare occurrence. He has love for the wild life and small, hapless creatures.  I liked the story very much. My only vac...

 Authority  (Southern Reach #2) By Jeff Vandermeer  Published Year: 2014  Page Count: 281 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Thriller, Psychological Fiction, Suspense, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀 I loved this even better than the first book, a masterpiece - Annihilation. The narrative has a dark, compelling and bleary ambience. It also has a visceral quality to it. I felt all the confusing and combobulating thoughts the main character underwent. Such a dark and delicate book this is!  The biologist who got possessed by whatever animal/organism there is in the Area  X of Hadley town is back among people. She is found in a zombie state, staring at an empty lot and is brought in for questioning. The director, John Rodriguez, is newly brought in by his mother's string pulling. As he questions the biologist and uncovers the last few months of the last director's life before she disappeared into the Area X , he starts slowly to sink int...

 The Perfect Couple  By Elin Hildebrand  (Nantucket #3) Published Year : 2018 Page Count: 347 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Romance, Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Drama, Crime, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5  The ending is such an anticlimax and a let down for me - it almost feels like being cheated. I got so high and invested in the narrative..I lost sleep for most of last night and was reading all day since I got up this morning. The character development is ooof .. the characters are filled with life, credulity and fly off the page into the reader's mind space. I loved the layout of the narrative. I loved the writing.  I would have liked if the mother of the family was a bit on the negative side as well. I mean, really, having Nicole Kidman play the role and making it all cute, nice and kind, compassionate is like wasting enormous talent. I picked this book because I saw an ad that there is a limited series coming up on Netflix ...