Nagasravika's Book Reviews Blog

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau  By Silvia Moreno Garcia  Rating 4/5  Genres : Fiction, Mexico, Fantasy  I liked the premise for the book more than the actual story itself. A doctor isolates himself on a Mexican island and conducts experiments of creating hybrid creatures..sometimes mingling animal with animal and other times human with animal.. his daughter Carlota being one of them. His employer not getting enough return on his investment plans to cease funding and at the same time the employer's son falls in love with Carlota .. but he is not a good fella .. the doctor wants the marriage and funding.. others in the sanatorium don't want anything to do with their alliance ..  All things break down at the end. The daughter of doctor moreau sets up her own place and practice with her surname wiped clean.. its an interesting read. Unlike other works where mention of hybrids made me cringe.. this one is very moderate and gave those animals a real human l...

Hidden Pictures (2022) By Jason Reklulak  Rating : 5/5  Genres : horror, suspense,twist, fiction  284 pages (Kindle Digital Edition)  A fantastic story with a terrific twist and a terrific ending! Loved this and couldn't put it down at all. I picked this after the goodreads choice awards are announced and this book won the award for horror genre. Finished it in a day and half .. the story is shrouded in mystery and suspense right from the start and I didn't see the twist coming..  A girl who is a drug addict but has been sober for over 20 months is hired as a nanny for the summer by a rich family. She has to look after their five year old kid Teddy and is given a cottage to live in. As the story unfolds, she learns that there is a spirit following Teddy and is trying to tell a story through his paintings/pictures. There is also a psychic woman Mitzi living as their neighbor who helps spin up a ouja board for communicating with the spirit. So who...

Therese Raquin  By Emilie Zola  Genres : Fiction, classics, Temperament  Rating 5/5  I am an ardent fan of the works of Emilie Zola. Like his precious books I have read and enjoyed, he didn't disappoint with this one either. Liked this one immensely!!   Its an ongoing and nonstop feature of anxieties and fears between a husband and wife who had murdered an innocent man to get together. Therese and Camille have been brought up together by Camille's doting and caring mother. They were married to each other but Therese had little affection to this sickly man and indulges in a debauched relationship with his friend Laurent. Laurent wants a lazy life where someone takes care of him and his needs. He sees opportunity for realizing his goal with Therese and both of them together murder/drown Camille on a trip. After that they have not a minute's peace and try to find ways to escape each other and also the ghastly act they have committed. The end comes ...

The Glass Hotel (2020)  By Emily St. JOHN Mandel  Rating 5/5  Genres : Fantasy, Contemporary,  Fiction  276 pages ( Kindle digital edition )  Funny in a non funny sort of a way. A close knit of people dragged into a case of ponzi scheme that crashed with the 2008 financial market..Johnathan at the helm of it and all his associates .. how it unraveled and what happened to the involved people after he got convicted. Some commit suicide,  some end up in jail like him,  some walk out without a penny in their pockets. The style of writing is very prosaic and moving.. there is hilarity even in places where it is not to be expected.  Liked the book very much!

I'm glad my mom died (2022) by Jeanette McCurdy 275 pages (Kindle Digital Edition) Genres: fiction, contemporary, finished. Rating : 5/5 🥰🥰 Very refreshing. Brutally honest and scathingly candid. Jeanette has bared her soul to the reader about her destructive tendencies encouraged by her mother and also showed through her effort and recovery that there is a silver lining to the most desperate situations. Jeanette has been codependent on her manipulative and highly ambitious and controlling mom all the time she was alive. She wanted nothing but to please her and so did everything that did please her. Which was take up acting in kid shows and controlling her appearance through food restrictions. Her mother, a cancer patient doesn't make it out for long in her life but her ideas and judgements follow Jeanette way after she has left her. She becomes a compulsive bulimic and .. has non complete or unfulfilling relationships with men.. one of them Steven whom she thinks...

The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) By Philippa Gregory  667 pages (Kindle Digital Edition)  Genres : Historical Fiction, Tudors, England, Boleyns. Rating : 4/5  I am reading this book after Wolf Hall. It adds a lot of context and familiarity to the plot. But I didn't see Anne's disgrace coming. I didn't expect her fate to end in such a tragic state. Spoken in the narrative tongue of Mary Boleyn,  the book takes us through the historical romance of Henry Tudor with Mary herself, with Anne Boleyn - her elder sister even while he was married to Katherine of Aragorn for over 20 years and waiting for the marriage to be annulled.  Henry Tudor has been married long time to Katherine of Aragorn and he hasn't got a son on her. He only ever got a daughter followed by a stream of miscarriages or still births. Disappointed and with a wandering eye, he takes Mary Boleyn who is married to William Carey as his lover. They have two children - a girl and a boy. But to...

To The Lighthouse [1927] By Virginia Woolfe  (188 pages from the Kindle Digital Edition) Rating 4/5  Genres : classics, human relationships  This book is termed the 15th among the 100 best novels of the 20th century. This plot showcases the complexities of human relationships through interactions among the members of a Ramsay family and guests at their home. Father and mother, Mr and Mrs Ramsay, have their own quirks and marital problems which are laid bare to the reader through someone making an observation but the irregularities are smoothed out through compromise and a burst of love, duty and responsibility.  Mr. Ramsay is a tyrannical and authoritative parent who is needy and desirous of appreciation to his work which he fears doesn't amount to much in the world. He demands sympathy from his wife and others and he usually gets what he wants. He is a rambunctious person whom his children James and Cam (among others) hate the most and they dislike his m...

The Lady in the Lake [1943] By Raymond Chandler 233 pages (Kindle Digital Edition) Rating  4/5  Genres : Mystery, Fiction, Hardboiled, Noir. A rich man engages Philip Marlowe to figure the whereabouts of his missing wife. She had gone missing a month ago and had sent a wire saying that she was getting married to someone. The man denies any such arrangement and this has the husband worried about the welfare of his wife. After Marlowe takes up the case, he uncovers another case linked to this in which a neighbor's wife has also gone missing the same day as the rich man's wife. A dead body is recovered from the lake near the cabin and the very next day, more dead bodies turn up. Key people linked with the case start getting murdered and who has the most to gain from this? Or is this all linked to covering up some past history? A game being played by two ex lovers endangering many lives?  I love whodunit and hardboiled noir fiction very much. Though there are witt...

Laughter in the Dark [1932] By Vladimir Nabokov  184 pages [Kindle Digital Edition] Rating: 5/5  Genres: Tragedy, Classics, Fiction  A happy family unit. A rich man interested in making art and theater, his homely wife and lovely daughter. All this torn up by a sulky, self centered and frivolous young mistress and her lover. Nabokov is a master at creating scary scenes tinged with intrigue. I kept turning pages towards the end to get the bottom of what might happen ... and it ended up as a laughter in the dark...who is laughing and at whom? For what purpose?  Albinus is a rich man who have been married long time to a woman he loved and with a lovely daughter. One day he sees a young girl and falls deep in trance about her. He courts her, gives her little gifts and makes her his mistress. She is a frivolous little thing. Not serious about life but wanting him to divorce his wife and marry her...into this picture enters her former lover who once cheated her...

The Three Body Problem [2008] By Cixin Liu  Winner of Hugo Award 2008  399 PAGES (Kindle Digital Edition) Rating 5/5👍 GENRES: Fiction, Hard core, Aliens, Dystopian. Not the usual kind of scifi novel. There are plenty of different elements thrown into the mix. I am at a loss of words on what and how to describe what I just read. Aliens are invited to invade planet Earth by a notable scientist who thinks their invasion would solve the crisises humans have been unable to solve for themselves. There cannot be a more naive assumption. As it is proved in the book, the intentions of the aliens for invasion turn out to be purely malignant and selfish in nature. Anyways, as mentioned, though that is the crux of the plot, it is also just one aspect of it.  The Three Body game which introduces the world of aliens called the Trisolaris is just amazing. . .no other words. Though it is a game that is played wearing a V suit and head helmet to experience the world and its c...