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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Lovetorn


When Shalini’s father gets a new job in L.A., she is torn away from her life in India and the boy to whom she’s been betrothed since she was three. L.A. is so different, and Shalini dresses and talks all wrong. She isn’t sure she’ll survive high school in America without her fiancé, Vikram, and now she has to cope with her mom’s homesickness and depression. A new friend, chill and confident Renuka, helps Shalini find her way and get up the courage to join the Food4Life club at school. But she gets more than just a friend when she meets Toby—she gets a major crush. Shalini thinks she loves Vikram, but he never made her feel like this.


In Lovetorn, Shalini discovers that your heart ultimately makes its own choices, even when it seems as if your destiny has already been chosen.


Author Kavita Daswani has always been fascinated by child marriages and betrothals, and this story of a traditional girl from India, who is exposed to so many more freedoms and experiences after being dropped in a completely alien culture, is a fresh and contemporary look at the subject. (from Goodreads)


I was really, really looking forward to this book. And it didn't disappoint. 

In some ways, this book was like a lot of other general fiction/romances: new school, mean girls, little sister that makes friends easily, culture shock, etc., but there were also a lot of things not seen very much: her mother's depression, the Food4Life club, and most of all, Vikram's attitude. 

Most books that I've read that have a love triangle like this made the character that Vikram represented an asshole, or someone that never played a huge part. But in Lovetorn, even though he was in India and Shalini in L.A., he was constantly on her thoughts. And from his emails and his talking on the phone, he seemed to really care about her.

Shalini wasn't a cardboard cutout character. She was her own person with flaws and everything, not just an empty shell of a person for the reader to slip into. 

In fact, there was only one slight problem I had with the book - the climax and the resolution were too quick, too rushed. I felt that there could have been more conflict and more of an ending if everything had been drawn out and explained a bit more. 


Except for the ending, I loved this book. 

2 comments:

  1. Lovely review! Oddly enough, I haven't heard of this one before, but after your review, I think I may add it to my TBR list. We can all use a nice gen fic every now and then. :D

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  2. Yeah, gen fic is always what gets me out of reading slumps. :D

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