Nagasravika's Book Reviews Blog

 Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales  By Yoko Ogawa  Released Year : 2013  Page count : 169 pages  Medium Used: reMarkable 2 Genre : Dark, Short Stories, Drama, Gore, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5  I enjoyed reading these little short stories .. each of which contain some dark tale - although I didn't feel them to be so gore or filled with macabre. They are also interconnected .. some of them are told from different POVs of the characters involved and some are stories within stories. The gender of the character narrating a tale is unknown .. most of the times it distinctly felt female even when it turned to be a male. This book felt so very comfortable and cozy to read with a hit cup of coffee. I couldn't relinquish reading it. I kept going, making some 'aha' mental connections between the different stories. Though it didn't feel like that's the way it is written, I would have liked to have a hierarchical structure to the story linkage .. like some stories/tale refe...

 The Color of Magic  By Terry Pratchett  Released Year: 1983 Page count: 212 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Fantasy, Supernatural, Magic, Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5  Tourists, wizards, death lord, demons, trolls and many many other exciting creatures make up this story. It is fantastic. Although it was written in the late 20th century, it makes lot of sense and even blew my mind reading it now. My favorite character in the story is the box with its undying loyalty and endless legs. It follows whereever its master travels to and never gives up. It can swallow people and carry a great deal of things.  A tourist sets out on a journey to see the thrilling elements of this world. He meets a strange wizard - that cannot do any magic but has a time-space altering verse hidden in his subconscious. He teams up with the wizard and they set out on a journey that is both thrilling and diverse in its scope of characters met and chilling in the n...

  Vampire Diaries #3-4 (The Fury and The Reunion) by L .J. Smith Released Year: 1991 Page count: 410 pages Medium Used : Paperback Genre : Mythology, Fantasy, Magic, Suspense, Vampires, Weres, 2024-read. Rating : 5/5 🌟 😎 😀 🤣 👌 Fantastic. One of the very good books I read in a while! Fast paced. Informative. Imaginative. Totally engrossing. I usually skip scenes with fighting and skirmishes but the last few pages of this book, I was hanging on every word. This read is so good. The very famous TV show is loosely based on this book series. Many characters are retained and used the same. But the scenes and situations are all altered. Though the TV show is more successful, I feel the book is good and gigantic in its own right. This is no less suspenseful and is even more focused, directed because the set of characters is limited to a core few. In the third book, we see Katherine playing the villain. Elena dies and returns as a vampire. In the fourth part, Klaus is the villain and E...

 Past Lives (2023) : Movie  Year Released : 2023  Cast : Teo Yoo, Greta Lee, John Magaro. Director: Celine Song  Language : English and Korean with subs Rating : 8.5/10   What I liked :  I liked the silence and the smooth flowing screenplay. I loved the landscapes and background decor of New York where most of the movie takes place.  Silence speaks volumes and it spoke louder than words in this film. A lot of communication is non-verbal or happens in Korean which felt savory.  The actors fit their  characters very well. How wonderful is it that this movie needed no more than three characters and thoroughly work its magic!  I learned something new from the Korean culture - a concept of In-Yan. When people come together and mingle with each other or not, it is because they have had connections from past lives. And to those that get married, they must have had over 8000 lives of inyan. How cool is that!  What I didn't like : I am mor...

 Looking for Alaska  By John Green  Published Year : 2005 (by Dutton Books)  Page Count: 265 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Drama, Young Adult, Philosophy, Life and Death, 2024-read.  Rating : 4.25/5 😁😁😁😁😁 I enjoyed reading this. The prose is great. Its an electric debut. At first, I thought that 'Looking for Alaska ' means looking for the state of Alaska but in this book, it is the name of a girl who surprisingly and unconventionally names herself after the state on her 7th birthday.  Alaska is an unusual and unrestrained girl whom the narrator, Miles, meets and falls into an obsession over. It's not just him but she has many followers and fans in their university. Miles has had an uneventful and smooth life until her meets her and a gang of unruly kids at his new university in Alabama. He becomes part of their prank playing, secret booze consuming and smoking gang. He has really the best time of his life. Then ...

  The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware Published Year : 2016 Page Count : 406 pages Medium Used: remarkable 2 Genre : Psychological Fiction,Suspense, Thriller, Drama, 2024-read. Rating : 3.5/5 💫💫💫*️⃣ The prose is good. The story is predictable, yet surprising at times. It is like reading a comfort book, crawling under a favorite lamp, with the book in one hand and a hot mug of coffee in another. It was a fast paced, easy read book. It gave me quite a scare because the likelihood, of a harrowing situation the main character goes through in the book, is easily high. LO Blacklock is a travel journalist who goes on a small boat Aurora’s maiden cruise along with a bunch of other journalists and rich people. On the first night aboard, she meets a young woman in the cabin next to hers. The next night, she hears a splash in the water and sees a smear of blood on the window pane of the neighbor’s cabin. No one acknowledges to knowing the woman. Its like she was never there. But Lo still ha...

 Victory City  By Salman Rushdie  Published Year: 2023 (Penguin Random House) Page count: 338 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Fantasy, History, Mythology, Magical Realism, 2024-read  Rating : 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Loved this book so much. It reads like fiction but feels real enough to believe. Except some parts that are wild and incredulous. I think the character of Pampa Kampana is flawless and solid. Salman Rushdie seemed to have done lot of research and reading into the Hindu Mythology and Indian customs, beliefs and faiths. There is no element of satire in this. Only wide eyed admiration and adoration to what people hold dear. I wish there would come other books like this one and I get to read them to my heart's content.  A city is built from the magical seeds of a woman and destroyed couple of centuries later. She dies with the City - more like, vanishes when the city faces it's absolute destruction/annihilation. She lives all the while in a younger bo...

Bride  By Ali Hazelwood  Published Year: 2024 Page count: 352 pages  Medium used : remarkable 2 Genre : Romance, Fantasy, Romantsy, Vampires, Werewolves, Suspense,Mystery, 2024-read.  Rating : 3.7/5 ⭐⭐⭐💫 I knew what to expect when I picked an Ali Hazelwood novel but this felt like the author is taking a new direction in her story telling curve. She has evolved from writing and entertaining us with teen romances, Young Adult fiction and now onto romantsy genre. I liked the world building, the atmosphere created. I liked it that she tried to make this more than a vampire girl - werewolf man romance by adding a tinge of suspense and mystery. I cringed at all the smut and there is more than her usual dose of it. I skipped all the smut and felt the book could have been a better one without all those cringe descriptions of vampire - werewolf sex. But I guess some read this precisely for that!  Coming to the story. The bride is the daughter of the most powerful vampir...

 Drishyam 2 : Movie Release Year : 2021 Cast : Mohanlal, Meena  Director : Jeethu Joseph Genre : Crime, Thriller  Rating : 9/10  Drishyam 2(Malayalam) is a fantastic movie with impeccable acting and perfect script. This is my second attempt at watching the movie. The first time, which was almost an year ago, I tried watching the telugu remake and stopped mid way. Because it was so boring. That version of the movie gave me a lasting headache. So, today,, when I wanted to watch a refreshing crime thriller and Prime Video prompted the malayalam version, I warily started watching it. Immediately, I was hooked. The characters are great. The story is riveting. The overall movie - is a befitting sequel to the superhit first part, Drushyam.  Six years have passed since the murder of Varun and the police haven't let go of the case against GeorgeKutty and his family. The noose is tightening without their awareness and Georgekutty is inches away from facing the gallows. Wh...

 When We Were Orphans  By Kazho Ishiguro  Published Year: 2000 Page count: 313 pages  Medium used : Paperback  Genre : China, Detective, Drama, Booker Prize, 2024-read, Suspense, Opium War, book review.  Rating : 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌟 Nobel prize award winner, Kazuo Ishiguro, has managed to wow me yet again. This is a story that taught me many things. Among the most important is how corrupt human nature can be and at the cost of other people, how some would choose to singularly benefit. This is not applicable to just one country like China, though that is the focus here, but a generic trait. Also how some people can take vengeance a bit too far. They take so much pleasure from seeing others, whom they once have loved deeply, suffer.  This is a story of loss and dealing with it in a humane way. A child separated from his parents very early on. A lover separated from his partner because their goals are not fully aligned. A world on the brink of a war and collapse, ...