The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  Book: The Three Lives of Cate Kay Author: Kate Fagan  Pages: 304 Read on: Kindle Read in: ~3 hours  Plot Summary:  Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now. As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she’ll be a whole person again. Things I Liked:  1. This is a very atmospheric, well-written  and int...

  Book: Heartstopper Vol. 5  Author and Illustrator: Alice Oseman  Pages: 336  How Long it Took Me To Read: An Hour  Plot Summary:   Nick and Charlie are very much in love. They've finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick's house ... But with Nick going off to university next year, is everything about to change? By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize,  Heartstopper  encompasses all the small moments of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us. Review: I binge read the first four volumes back in 2021, right before the series premiered on Netflix and I loved it- like everyone else on the planet. These books are just so warm and wholesome and sincere and the characters seem to painfully real. What I love most about these books is that the teens in these books feel and act and talk and come across as real teens. Confused, un...

Book: Bright Young Women  Author: Jessica Knoll  Pages: 384 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  January 1978. A serial killer has terrorized women across the Pacific Northwest, but his existence couldn’t be further from the minds of the vibrant young women at the top sorority on Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee. Tonight is a night of promise, excitement, and desire, but Pamela Schumacher, president of the sorority, makes the unpopular decision to stay home—a decision that unwittingly saves her life. Startled awake at 3 a.m. by a strange sound, she makes the fateful decision to investigate. What she finds behind the door is a scene of implausible violence—two of her sisters dead; two others, maimed. Over the next few days, Pamela is thrust into a terrifying mystery inspired by the crime that’s captivated public interest for more than four decades. On the other side of the country, Tina Cannon has found peace in Seattle after years o...

  Book: Villainy  Author: Upamanyu Chatterjee  Pages: 336 Read: The hardcover edition pictured above  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  Walkers in a Delhi neighbourhood park come upon a body on a mid-winter morning—an unidentified body, unremarkable but for an extraordinary scar right between the eyes.   A delinquent teenager—who prefers, to the rest of living, an Ecstasy pill with a beer, and the interior of an expensive car with a gun in his pocket—leaves home one evening for a joyride in his father’s Mercedes.  In the nineteen years separating these episodes, five killings take place—and one near-fatal battery—none of which would have happened if a school bus hadn’t been in the wrong lane. Deals are struck between masters and servants, money changes hands, assurances are given and broken. The wheels of justice turn, forward, backwards and sideways, pause and turn again. Old alliances are tested and new ones are formed in prison cells, mortuarie...

  Book: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow  Author: Gabrielle Zevin  Pages: 383 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~5 hours  Plot Summary:  Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world -- of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy. Things I Liked: 1....

  Book: Remarkably Bright Creatures  Author: Shelby Van Pelt  Pages: 368 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late. Things I Liked:  1. A book told, partially, from the per...

  Book: Seeking Fortune Elsewhere Author: Sindya Bhanoo Pages: 241 Read on: Kindle  Read in: 2.5 hours  Plot Summary:  Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart. In “Malliga Homes,” selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.   Sindya Bhanoo’s haunting stories show us how immigrants’ paths, and the paths of those they l...

  Book: Where the Crawdads Sing  Author: Delia Owens  Pages: 384  Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4.5 hours  Plot Summary:  For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl.  But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.  General Thoughts: I've had this book lying around on my Kindle since early 2020 when it first started getting a lot of buzz. It was the early days of the pandemic and Where the Crawdads Sing was one of the first books I bought to ...

  Book: Almond  Author: Won-Pyung Sohn  Pages: 272 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~3 hours Plot Summary:  This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster.  One of the monsters is me. Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful Post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say "thank you," and when to laugh. Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and they develop a surpr...

  Book: Wahala  Author: Nikki May   Pages: 384  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 Days  Plot Summary:   Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one” (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends. Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be. Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.” Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not. When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Hong Kong! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more...

  Book: The Sentence Author: Louise Erdrich  Pages: 395 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~5 hours  Plot Summary:  A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer.  Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. Things I Liked: 1.  The writing! I am a big, big fan of Erdrich's moving, evocative writing and I wanted to inhale her words and yet read the book slowly. Other readers can relate!  2. The premise of this book is  revenant , timely and interesting. I love reading about different cultures and about  lives of  peo...

 Hello Loves!  I treated myself to some books back in June to celebrate my Blog turning Eight.  I got some books I've meant to read for a while and out of these five books I'v already read four, so this is both a haul and my thoughts on these reads.  Let's jump in.  1. The Heart Asks Pleasure First by Karuna Ezara Parikh: First up we have this gorgeous book that I had wanted to read since it came out last year. It sounded like everything I normally enjoy in a book, plus I have on occasional read some of the author's work and have really enjoyed her way with words.  Also I caved in and bought the tote designed to accompany this book by the folks over at The Burlap People (the author is a co-owner of the brand, fyi I love The Burlap People). Here is the tote.  Isn't it pretty?  OK, back to the book.  This book is essentially a tale of star crossed lovers. An Indian Girl and a Pakistani Boy meet in the UK and fall in love, knowing fairly well t...

 Hello Loves!  Hope this weekend is proving to be a time of rest and joy.  I am a little worried about the health of a close relative, cooking for my family and reading to keep myself sufficiently distracted.  Here is what me and my sister are Reading this weekend.  In Plain Sight by Mohamed Thaver: This is what my sister is reading.  Mumbai. Murder.  And an investigation.  She is a little bit in and quite enjoying this book. It's a past paced and simple read. Perfect if you, like so many of us, are finding reading and focusing on things a bit much lately. It's a good book to pick up and breeze through over the weekend.  The  review for this will be up once she's done reading it.  Plot Summary:   When the rapes and murders of three minor girls remain unsolved for months, a frustrated DCP Sawant calls in Police Inspector Waghmare. Renowned as Mumbai police's 'investigation machine', Waghmare is rumoured to solve crimes in his d...