Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 The Marriage Portrait  By Maggie O'Farrell  Published Year : 2022  Page count : 376 Pages  Medium used : Kindle PW  Genre : Historical Fiction, Italy, Uxoricide, Suspense, Psychological Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I was wavering between a 4 and 4.5 rating while reading the book. But the last few pages solidified my decision into a firm 5 point category. The prose is so delicious and refreshing. The suspense is both chilling and thrilling to unravel. The plot is riveting. Lucrezia de Medici, the duchess of Ferrara and daughter of Duke of Tuscany, one year into her marriage, senses that her husband is set to kill her. The book opens on a note of his being coy and nice to her, where she is not fooled for a second. This sense of danger with no hope for escape is shocking and revelatory of the times the narrative takes place in. There is also a sense of adventure, in planning for escape from her enslaved, dreary existence juxtaposed with the da...

 The Woman in the Window  By A.J.Finn (2018) (430 pages Kindle Digital Edition) Genre : Contemporary, Fiction, Thriller, Psychological Fiction, Suspense,Detective, Mystery,Child abuse,Alcoholism.  Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀 Simply superb! Loved it! Wish I had picked this sooner! One in its own class! 🥰🥰 Translated into over 40 languages and millions of copies sold worldwide! A major motion picture from Fox, available on Netflix! Eager to watch Amy Adams and Julian Moore blow my mind! Will check this out.😀😇 A child psychologist,Anna Fox,has experienced severe trauma and is reduced to stay indoors with doors locked and shutters closed shut . She is suffering from Agoraphobia - fear of open spaces and crowded places. No one visits her except her psychiatrist and aerobic trainer. No one calls her except her distant, separated husband and daughter. Her day is split between watching black and white movies on repeat, excessive drinking, online chatting and snooping on her neigh...

Gone Girl [2012] by Gillian Flynn  470 Pages {Kindle Digital Edition} Genre: Psychological Fiction, suspense, murder, thriller, best seller Rating 5/5 ✌👀👀👩   Someone in the need of a good mystery thriller to curl feet on bed and sink into? This would be a perfect fit! The mindboggling plot unravels fast and steady releasing more shattering and shaky pieces to put the puzzle together.  I have never come to hate or fear a fictional character so much .. that's how good the character of Amy is developed. If there is a gauge to warn us of such disturbed/destructive people as Amy in our vicinity/life .. it would be so much better! Flynn has managed to create Nick and Amy so good they become personal - take Nick's side or Amy's side but not both. Husband and wife play at a zero sum game .. Amy framing and proving him to be her murderer while Nick trying and struggling hard to prove otherwise. It is fun until it is not. An innocent man could have lost his life for the vic...

The Last House on Needless Street  By Catriona Ward  Rating : 4/5  Genres : Horror, Mental Illness, 2022-read,Psychological Fiction, Multiple Personality Disorder.  Here comes one of the books that's not over rated at all in this genre of fiction. I guess I was 25 percent into the plot and the time was 12 AM and decided to turn in for the night. Fifteen minutes later, I got up and resumed from where I left off  realizing that the plot got deep under my skin. I got hooked to the sensation of peeling off layers of the story and having a different taste with each bite. The plot gets curvaceous and twisted with depth and at the end once everything is figured out and all the bones are laid bare, it seems too simple. I was able to unlock some of the mystery but not all of it. And the author really plays with the imagination and judgements of the reader by playing with her words and writing style .. putting and framing an innocent victim into the role ...

Contempt  By Alberto Moravia  Rating 4/5 🥰😉 Genres : Existential reality, Psychological fiction, 2022-read, Fiction Riccardo and Emilia have lived a loving and content life as married couple for two years albeit his financial inability to provide her with what he thinks she wants/craves for the most - their own house. Their situation takes a turn for the better when Riccardo gets an opportunity to write a movie script with a famous producer Battista. Although he hates his job because of a lack of self recognition or identification it would give him, he takes it purely for the money to rent a flat with Emilia. But shortly there after he starts noticing a change in her behavior - he becomes absolutely convinced that she has stopped loving him and is indeed looking/treating him with contempt. He doesn't heed her assurances that's its not the case and falls into an endless self probing about why this has happened,  why she has stopped loving him and started desp...

Flowers for Algergon  By Daniel Keyes  Rating 4/5 Genres : Psychological fiction, Mental illness, 2022-read My God! This is some pretty deep stuff. Makes me look at mental retardation from a totally new perspective. The fear and anathema the main character - who is retarded - feels towards being laughed at and ridiculed is very tangible and visceral through the text that inspired me into absolute  pity for him and hatred towards his perpetrators. Its a consolation that he is not used as a guinea pig by those ruthless and self centered scientists..atleast there was some humane element to the whole plot. Most of the abusive past the main character Charlie recalls is while he is becoming smarter as a result of a brain surgery and it is handled with some detachment and in a non emotional way which I felt took the sting out of the whole past for Charlie but failed to cause a stir in me as a result..I would have liked to read the same material handled by someone els...

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? By Henry Farrell Genre : Thriller, horror, psychological fiction,classics, best-twists, good prose, 2021-read, macabre Rating : 5/5 🎈🎈 What a twist! Didn't see that one coming! It's true what they say - all that glitters is not gold. What looks beautiful on the outside need not be so on the inside. "Beautiful people could also be very bad". This is a story of jealousy,hatred, selfishness, vengeance and the repercussions that one has to face when they can't keep these emotions in check. It's a classic story from the 1960s which got made into a successful movie with the same name starring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis who were arch rivals. It also was the book that kind of revived the slow going career of Henry Farrell and brought him back into the game with full force. 💃 Baby Jane Hudson was a star. She was hailed the most talented and famous child star by everyone. Mostly her father and family who felt they owed all the...

The Last Thing He Told Me  by Laura Dave (2021) Genres: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Fiction, Female Centered, 2021-read Rating: 3.5/5 👼👼 I finish off this book with a sense of warmth and gratitude in my heart. I started this book yesterday and couldn't put it down - even after the plot veers off into an area I thought could get disappointing. But ofcourse, it didn't. :) I thoroughly enjoyed both the explicable and the inexplicable aspects to the narrator's personality and her sometimes irrational actions. She put pure love and selflessness as her shield to get her and her ward (her step daughter put into her care) through a very difficult - if not impossible - situation. I hesitated to give this a 5-pointer because of some plot holes I felt are too glaring to ignore and of which I will mention shortly.  A little background into the story. The narrator of the story Hannah is nearing 40 years and is a wood turner(means a "carpenter" - she designs and makes fu...