The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 Hello October!!!  Hello Lights! Hello Diwali! Hello Spooky Reads + Movies!  I will be honest, October is one of my least favourite months of the year. The main reason for that is the post-monsoon heat wave! I am not a fan and I just can't deal with the heat wave we are experiencing!  What makes it worse is that the rest of the world is slipping into fall and all sorts of cozy and comfy vibes and here in Bombay, we are melting our faces off!  No Fun! But let's focus on some things that do take my mind off the heat and make me kinda excited for October!  1. Diwali: Lights, mithai, diyas and rangoli.  While it isn't my biggest festival, it is always lovely to see the light and general bonhomie in the air this time of the year!  I love making mithai at home and being in a happy mood during India's biggest festival and lighting maybe one phooljhari. :)  2. Stranger Things 2: Like every ...

Book: The Memory Watcher  Author: Minka Kent  Pages: 429  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days  Plot Summary:   Press, tap, refresh... When Autumn Carpenter stumbles upon the social media account of the family who adopted her infant daughter years ago, she finds herself instantly drawn into their picture-perfect existence.  From behind a computer screen, Autumn watches Grace's every memory, from birthdays to holidays to bedtime snuggles. But what starts as an innocent fascination soon spirals into an addictive obsession that comes to a screeching halt the day the McMullen family closes their Instaface account without so much as a warning.  Frantic and desperate to reconnect with her daughter, Autumn applies for a nanny position with the McMullens, manipulating herself into Grace's life under false pretenses. And it's only then that Autumn discovers pictures lie, the perfect family doesn't exist, an...

Book: Mafia Queens of Mumbai Stories of Women from the Ganglands.  Author: S. Hussain Zaidi with Jane Borges  Pages: 347  Read On: Kindle  Publisher: Tranquebar Press  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 hours ( I breezed through this book!)  Plot Summary:   From victims to victims to victors, this collection of stories contains intricate details of thirteen women who went on to leave their permanent mark on the face face of the Mumbai Mafiosi. General Thoughts: This really isn't the kind of book I am drawn towards. But I saw it on Kindle Unlimited and thought I'd give it a shot. I had heard good things about it and being from Bombay, reading about it's underbelly seemed appealing.  Things I Liked:  1. I really enjoyed the writing style of this book. The book is simply written and makes for an intriguing and easy read. I breezed through this book in one sitting, I simply couldn't put it down....

Book: Beneath a Scarlet Sky Author: Mark Sullivan  Pages: 526  Read on: Kindle via Kindle Unlimited  Read in: 6-7 hours over three days  Publisher: Lake Union Publishing  Plot Summary: P ino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders. Now, with the opportunity to spy f...

Book: The Woman on the Orient Express Author: Lindsay Jane Ashford  Pages: 332 Read on: Kindle {via Kindle Unlimited} Read in: 3-4 hours  Publisher: Lake Union Publishing  Plot Summary:  Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can’t neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey. Agatha isn’t the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling’s first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit.  Nancy Nelson—newly married but carrying another man’s child—is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair.  Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their live...

( Click on 'Preview' to read the first chapter) Book: Missing  Author: Monty Marsden  Pages: 266 Read on: Kindle  Read in: 2.5 hours  Publisher: Aria Plot Summary:  In a little village in Lombardy it’s a cold November morning when Ami, a little girl of Senegalese origin, steps out of her house to go to school ... and never comes back. As soon as her father raises the alarm, a frantic search begins.  The investigation is led by Police Commissioner Sensi. His men immediately find a trail to follow, but it soon proves to lead nowhere.  Three months after the sad aftermath of the event, the Police Commissioner Sensi decides to go and visit Dr Claps, an old friend and a renowned criminologist, who guesses from his first few words the real reason for the visit. It’s not just about Ami; she’s not the only little girl to have disappeared. Things I Liked: 1. The premise is really interesting- several missing girl...

Book: Sisters One, Two, Three Author: Nancy Star  Pages: 354 Read on: Kindle {via Kindle Unlimited} Read in: 3-4 hours  Plot Summary:  After a tragic accident on Martha’s Vineyard, keeping secrets becomes a way of life for the Tangle family. With memories locked away, the sisters take divergent paths. Callie disappears, Mimi keeps so busy she has no time to think, and Ginger develops a lifelong aversion to risk that threatens the relationships she holds most dear. When a whispered comment overheard by her rebellious teenage daughter forces Ginger to reveal a long-held family secret, the Tangles’ carefully constructed web of lies begins to unravel.  Upon the death of Glory, the family’s colorful matriarch, and the return of long-estranged Callie, Ginger resolves to return to Martha’s Vineyard and piece together what really happened on that calamitous day when a shadow fell over four sun-kissed siblings playing at the shore. Along with...

Hello!  Time to recap and talk about everything I read in January.  January was a good month, I read 14 books and that is a good way to kickstart a new year.   I did make a TBR, but I didn't share it on the blog nor did I particularly stick to it.  I read what I felt like and it was nice.  There were a lot of ebooks and I loved my Kindle.  Let's get into all books I read in January and how I felt about them.  JANUARY READS 2017!  1. A Book of Simple Living: Notes from the Hills by Ruskin Bond: I started my year with some Ruskin Bond and it was a good decision. I spent most of my month with this book. I started it on the first day of the year and finished it on the last day of the year. I took my time with it and loved all the comfort it brought me. An easy little happy read.  4/5  2. Sherlock Holmes- His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Another great way to start the new year. To be honest I ...

Book: Shadow in the Mirror Author: Deepti Menon Pages: 182 Read on: Kindle via our Kindle Unlimited Subscription  Read in: 2 hours  Plot Summary:  It all begins with a death. Nita, a pregnant woman falling from her balcony becomes the string that unravels the plot. Her death casts a shadow over many lives; her heartbroken father, her husband and Vinny, a young journalist, drawn in by the whiff of foul play and murder. What follows are stories within stories, eras and worlds colliding with each other, leaving behind splintered relationships and  mesmerising  slices of lives that appear to be drawn together and driven apart by the whimsical threads of destiny. As events cast their shadows ahead to link the stories of Vinny, Kavita, Roma, Krish and Nita in an unrelenting knot, a journey starts to uncover the truth. What is the secret that links Nita’s death to the other characters? Will Vinny be able to unravel the mystery of Nita...

Book: Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth Author: Aruna Nambiar Pages: 243 Publisher: Westland Books Read On: Kindle How Long it Took Me To Read: 3-4 days (with several breaks) Plot Summary:   Set in small-town Kerala of the 1980s, Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth is part coming-of-age story, part social satire and part comedy of errors. Geetha, elevenish, is off for the annual family vacation in Kerala and is looking forward to all the fun with her cousins – visits to the beach and trips to the market to buy glass bangles and kites and shuttlecocks, evenings in the veranda listening to her grandfather’s ridiculous ghost stories which he swears are all true, marathon card games and ferocious boys-versus-girls battles with the bristles of brooms made from coconut fibre…   But as the summer unfolds, Geetha finds herself spending more time instead at the back of the house with the free-spirited cook, the hypochondriac cleaner, the virile gardener, a cheeky helper girl… .....

Book: Penumbra Author: Bhaskar Chattopadhyay Pages: 282 Read On: Kindle How Long it Took Me To Read: 1 day...I breezed through this book. Plot Summary: I n the middle of one of the worst storms to hit the city, a mysterious letter arrives for Prakash Ray, an out-of-luck journalist, inviting him to a quaint, suburban bungalow, to celebrate the 60th birthday of an uncle he has never heard of . . . As Prakash reaches the venue, he is introduced to a motley group of people, all gathered there for the old man's big day: his son, his reticent brother, a dignified middle-aged lady who once owned the bungalow, a listless lawyer who manages his legal affairs, a mild-mannered young man who works as his secretary, his beautiful, young biographer, and his mysterious friend, who has never lost a game of chess to him. As the storm lashes on through the night, one of the people in the bungalow is murdered! In a game of cat and mouse that follows, Prakash soon finds out that ...

Book: Kathputli Author: Ushasi Sen Basu Pages: 282 Read On: Kindle How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days Plot Summary:   One woman. Two lives. Three generations. Four places. Chitrangda Chatterjee, 32, has been moving from one dead-end offshore job to another. Kathputli’s story begins after Chitrangda has quit her latest job and sets out in search of the perfect story for her Great Indian Novel. This takes her to a family reunion of her grandmother’s clan, where a story of the long-lost daughter of a once-powerful Zamindar family begins to take shape.  Unravelling the mystery of Mala’s disappearance a few years after the brutal murder of the boy she loved becomes an obsession for Chitrangda. One which draws Chitrangda out of her shell; and introduces her to the unaccustomed joys of getting to know new people and places.  What emerges, however, undermines the very foundation of Chitrangda’s understa...

Book: Shadowed Promise Author: Sunanda Chatterjee Pages: 229 Read via: Kindle Unlimited on my Kindle Read in: ~3 hours Plot Summary:  Moyna’s cousin panted at the doorway, heavy with child. “Who did this to you?” her father shouted. And Moyna knew that somehow she would be blamed for this unspeakable shame on the family. Her aunt blamed her for all the tragedies, from the death of Moyna’s own parents to the riots in Bombay. But, as her cousin lay dying of stab wounds, Moyna promised to protect the baby. In a panic, eighteen-year-old Moyna made a hasty decision that would return to haunt her years later.  Bullied as a child, Sameer wants to make the world a safer place.  He has spurned a cushy career in his father’s law firm for public service. Sameer is drawn to the mysterious Moyna when they meet in Los Angeles. The attraction seems mutual, but Moyna remains cautious and secretive about her past, insulating herself from love to protect others from her unl...