I ‘m not Twenty Four – Book Review

I’m Not Twenty-Four By Sachin Garg Book Review 
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 223

The story:

“I’m Not Twenty-Four…” is a simple enough story – Saumya, an MBA grad whose life revolves around staying in fashion and being frivolous with all sorts of romantic fantasies successfully lands a job with one of the top companies in the country, Lala Steel (yes, really). To her dismay she discovers that she’s posted to a town called Toranagallu in North Karnataka that she hasn’t even heard of. She is apprehensive about how she will survive there without her Delhi-comforts.But later, as she grows into her job, she discovers her strengths.

When she visits nearby town Hampi, she meets Shubro, a seemingly irresponsible person who appears to be a nomad. Later we know he has an agenda in life, and a very noble one at that. Saumya is completely drawn to Shubro and makes sure he can get in touch with her later. In the meantime, she focuses on her life and becomes fast friends with the two guys, Amit and Malappa, who joined the organization with her. Saumya soon  realizes that she can’t stomach the nature of her job and decides to quit with three months’ notice ahead of her.

An innocent visit to see Malappa and talk to him turns out to be fatal for him. Now Saumya can’t wait to finish her three months and move on. At this point in time, hottie Shubro turns up at her doorstep again. Conscious of Shubro’s “Move On Theory” where he seldom stays at the same place beyond three months, Saumya is a little sad when she realizes she’s seriously falling in love with the guy. To add to the charm, Shubro joins the company and moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

At the end of her notice period, which is coincidentally the end of Shubro’s 90-day stint, the two have a heart-to-heart and zzz happily together. Saumya wakes up to find Shubro gone. Silly girl doesn’t check her laptop and making a decision to return to work after taking two weeks off, departs for Delhi. Comes back after two weeks, sits at the laptop and finds the browser open in a blog – which is written by none other than Shubro under an alias.

Everything falls into place and she happily knows where to go meet him. So – everybody is happy. Other significant characters in the story are her boss, her best friend Vartika.

Buy the book

I’m not twenty four by Sachin Garg Book review

Dear Sachin,

When I signed up to receive a free copy of this book, I must confess that it was the cover that drew me in. It promised to be a good read. When I did receive the book last Monday, I was quite eager to read it. After all, every book from BlogAdda comes shrink-wrapped and I love the feeling of ripping that off, opening the book, and smelling that new-book fragrance. And let’s face it, I have my own favorite pair of red shoes. 

What I liked:

Okay, Sachin – first off, the thing that impressed me very much was this personal note. Full marks to you for this.

Happily, I began to read the book. Nice story.

While I like all kinds of presentations, I am partial to the first-person narration. I quite liked the way Saumya went about relating the events. I started off thinking, hmmm….I don’t think I like her very much….but changed my mind by the time I finished the book. She may have been a little immature in the beginning, but it was good to see the change as the story progressed. She seemed to have a fetish for breaking people’s teeth, which she got over, half way through the book. Amen to that.

It is a nice story – and I believed it, probably because I’ve seen worse. (probably because I am Not Twenty-Four!). I liked how you’ve characterized each person in the tale. I especially enjoyed the way it started off – with the prologue. Overall – nice flow. I read it to the end in almost one sitting.

I don’t want to add a sub-title about what I did not like because I don’t want to be nasty.

But, Sachin, I just can’t help pointing out some things that cheesed me off.

• Why so many spelling mistakes?
• Why such disregard for grammar?
• It is cute to write in a casual tone – but it is not cute to use the wrong grammar.
• Is it infra dig to edit?
• Forgive me, but it totally puts me off to see “waist” and “waste” used interchangeably.
• After some confusion over Torangallu, Toranagallu and Tornagallu, the book settled down to using Toranagallu.

I enjoyed the book basically, but found the grammar/spelling goofs very distracting.

The Verdict:

People, this book is worth a read, if you can ignore the sentence formation/grammar/spelling goofs.