The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  We watched Lust Stories 2 last night and here is a full on spoiler-filled review for y'all!  BEWARE- FULL SPOILERS AHEAD- SKIP THIS POST IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPOILERS Lust Stories 2 is an anthology of four short films centred around, what else, lust. The themes for each of these stories are different and so, as an anthology, it works well. Also, all the stories are women-centric, which given the theme is always nice to see. So, without any further ado, let's dive into the individual short films.  The first story is directed by R. Balki and is, honestly, one of the most ridiculous and far-fetched ones in the anthology! While it did make me chuckle on multiple occasions, the whole schtick of a Dadima insisting on her granddaughter have sex before marriage with a potential semi-arranged marriage groom is just ridiculously far fetched given the social milieu and the kind of family shown in this story, which is an average middle-upper-middle class family!  Can you imagine ...

  Book: The Only One Left  Author: Riley Sager  Pages: 401 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours Plot Summary:  At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope   Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother’s happy life   It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One n...

Hello Loves!  Where are the rains? It's nearly end of June and the rains are playing hard to get.  So here's a little throw back to these glorious flowers in the hills of Kurseong.  Oh God take me back to the hills.    Flowers + Mountains are a sure shot way to make me happy.  I cannot wait to go back to the hills. 

  Book: The Quiet Tenant  Author: Clémence Michallon  Pages: 372 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4.5 hours  Plot Summary:  He took you and you have been his for five years.  But you have been careful. Waiting for him to mess up.  It has to be now. Aidan Thomas is a hardworking family man and a respected member of his community. He's the kind of man who always lends a hand and has a good word for everyone. He's also a kidnapper and serial killer who has murdered eight women. And there's a ninth, a woman he calls Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed where she fears for her life. When Aidan's wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Cecilia, are forced to move. Aidan has no choice but to bring Rachel too, introducing her to Cecilia as a family friend who needs a place to stay. He knows that after five years of captivity, Rachel is too frightened of the consequences to attempt to escape. But Rachel is a fighter and a survivor. And when Emily, a l...

  Book: The Housemaid  Author: Freida McFadden  Pages: 329  Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~3 hours  Plot Summary:  Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor. I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband. I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out… and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside,  it’s far too late. But I reassure myself:  the Winchesters don’t know who ...

Book: Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder  Author: Gracie Ruth Mitchell  Pages: 376 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  Juniper Bean has big plans for her writing career. Swoony kisses, sigh-inducing happily ever afters—she’s going to write them all. There’s just one problem: she can’t seem to stop killing off her main characters. After accepting that a genre change is in order, Juniper sets out to do some research. What’s the best way to carry a dead body? How exactly does one pick a lock? Juniper is going to find out—with the unwilling help of her new roommate, Aiden. But Juniper’s plans go haywire when she stumbles across an actual, real-life dead body—and before she knows it, she and Aiden are thrust into the middle of a murder mystery that seems suspiciously tied to Juniper’s past. Who killed the girl in the woods? Can Juniper ever get the hang of mystery writing? And, perhaps the biggest question of all: Why the heck does Aiden look so good in a ...

Book: The Covenant of Water  Author: Abraham Verghese  Pages: 736  Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~8-9 hours, over two days  Plot Summary:  Spanning the years 1900 to 1977,  The Covenant of Water  follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.  At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself,  The Covenant of Water  is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human unde...

 Hello Loves!  Here's what my day looked like today.  Set up my June Journal.  Decorated.  Wrote.  Set some Goals.  A pen stand and some owls.  Summer Bloom.  Gratitude Journal, June Week I.  I don't really decorate my Gratitude Journal very much, I like to keep it clean and uncluttered.  The moon tonight is a thing of beauty.  I honestly was staring it for so long. It looked comically large. Like a big old dollop of ice-cream.  :)  How was your Saturday?  Mine was spent journaling and mainly setting up my new Journal for June. I finally got around to using my Traveler's Notebook Passport sized journal. Most of my morning was spent listening to music and decorating my inserts and writing some feelings away. The train accident in Odisha is breaking my heart and I cannot imagine the horror and pain and fear those passengers must be going through.  :(  I used to take long train journeys every single year w...

 Hello Loves!  Another Friday and another batch of Friday Faves.  This time we are doing a whole bunch of random faves.  First up is this gorgeous hand embroidered phone cover that was made by Rainbow Tales for us! Isn't it just lovely?!  My Kindle and my reading pen pouch. This cutie is from Paw Prints Accessories also on Instagram.  These beautiful Chhau brooches are painstakingly handmade by the lovely folks over at Naksha. We have so many beautiful jewellery pieces from Naksha and highly recommend them for beautiful fabric and wood-based jewellery.  Switched up the art on our walls and love the brightness these cute prints bring to the room. These prints are from Finding Daisies .  A beautiful handmade journal from Kagajphul . Love the art and the gamcha backdrop! So quintessentially Bengali!  Loving making a TBR pile in my pink IKEA Raskog cart. Very handy for keeping a capsule collection of books to dive into whenever I want!  H...

  Hello June!  Hello Rains!  Hello Thunder and Cozy Days full of Reading!  I feel alive when the monsoons come along. I cannot wait for proper rainy days and just chilling and reading some rain appropriate books.  I am so happy you are here June.  Be Good.  Be Kind.  Be Rainy and Wonderful!  ⛈⛈⛈⛈⛈⛈⛈⛈⛈ Today looked a little like this///  First I was feeling all the feelings about June. June for the longest time meant new beginnings, new term of school and kicking off another year of learning and of course the advent of rains.  So I wrote a little something.  June 1st also marks my sister's starting work anniversary so we try to do a little something special and this afternoon we treated ourselves to some Sushi to celebrate.  Sushi and a few dumplings.  :)  Yum Yum.  I also kicked some reading.  I am reading two books at the moment.  The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: I technically started t...