Book Review: Live from London by Parinda Joshi

   Live From London 

   by Parinda Joshi

   Rupa Publications, 204 pages

   Rs.195/-

   Genre: Contemporary fiction. Not at all sure if this is chick lit.

The story

The book revolves around the central character Nishi Gupta, who is keen on making it big in the entertainment industry, her parents, her three friends Sarah, Riya and Zac, her boss Lynette, her boyfriend and American Idol runner up Nick, Radio Mirchi DJ Arjun and others.

The story begins in London where sixteen year old Nishi, who lives with her parents, finds herself auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent. She does not make it and feels humiliated. She resolves to get over it and six years later, as a college grad, looks for an internship with a Record Label. Nishi now has a dream job, a dream boss, falls in love with the rock star client, gets hurt, breaks up, gets fired by her boss and follows her parents to India where she lands a cool job as a co-host on a reality show and oh, makes up with her rock star boyfriend who appears on the sets, on her opening day at the job. Phew! Through it all, her friends Zac, Riya and Sarah stick around her most of the time. Predictable situations, predictable ending. Call me blasé.

General impression

I was excited to see in the well-written excerpt that this book is set in the music industry and looked forward to reading it. But after I read the book, I got the feeling that it was written in a hurry with some parts added later, as an afterthought to give it some padding. I was a little disappointed that there was no real insight into the entertainment industry. 

The book is a fairly quick read and Ms.Parinda Joshi tries (too hard) to bring the situations and characters together with some humor thrown in. The writing style is casual, which is okay.

I’d like to congratulate Ms. Parinda Joshi on her debut novel. She’s got promise. But she needs to focus more, build on the characters and solidify their roles in the story while weaving situations.

My biggest grouse with the book is this: almost every page has grammatical errors and this kills my enjoyment of a book. There are also plenty of spelling mistakes. The somewhat confusing narrative lost me in parts – I could not figure out the flashbacks from the present and I kept having to go back to understand it. The sequence of events is also rather muddled at times and the author leaves a lot of situations dangling.

It would have been really nice if the book had been properly edited before being published. 

On a positive note, my favorite characters in the book are Nishi’s parents, typically nice, and Zac, who is interestingly different from the other rather clichéd characters. I also liked the décor of Nishi’s apartment. Irrelevant to the review, I know. Nishi comes across as a not-so-mature character and is rather annoying at times.  Oh, since I am nitpicking, I might as well say that I am glad I don’t always judge a book by its cover. This cover could have been better. Although, I must say that the teaser on the back cover was very well written.  Sadly, I found the book too dilute.

Ms. Parinda Joshi, I wish you all the best and hope your next book is much better!

By the way, I think the BlogAdda Book Review Program idea rocks. Thank you, BlogAdda, for sending me the book free, to review.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Vidya Sury