The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

 Hello Loves 🎀 I am feeling a little under the weather today.  So took things easy. Read a bit.  Chilled out.  And hoped for rain which has pretty much abandoned Mumbai.  Started this viral TikTok sensation..  My hopes/expectations are measured, I am just hoping for an easy and happy and emotional read.  I am a couple of pages in and quite happy as of now.  iPad, book and annotation things.  Finished reading this last night and it was cute and wholesome and full of cats.  In many ways it's exactly what you expect from a Japanese book.  Worth a read.  Iced-coffee.  Words of wisdom 🌿

  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...

 Hello Loves!  I know, I know..this post is beyond late. I don't even know what happened, I read such amazing books in March and I was dyinggg to talk about them. But..well. Here we are. Almost at the end of April and talking about my March reads!  I guess better late than never.  Chalo, let's just jump into my March books.  I read 16 books in March and all written by women in honour of International Women's Day and Women's History Month. It's the easiest reading goal/theme/challenge because I end up reading a ton of women's writing in any case. So this month is a month of easy, breezy and happy reading for me.  I read some incredible books and let's just jump right into it.  Let's go.  BOOKS OF MARCH 2023:   1. Daughters of Madurai by Rajashree Variyar: Loved this book about a mother and daughter and deep seated family secrets. Did a full review for this this, which you can read here.   4/5  2. I Have Some Questions for You by Reb...

  Book: Nine Liars Author: Maureen Johnson Pages: 457 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~5 hours  Plot Summary:  Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain—questions about college, love, and life in general. Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax. The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed...

  Book: Five Survive Author: Holly Jackson  Pages: 389 Read on: iPad Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: Her best friend - the older brother - his perfect girlfriend - a secret crush - a classmate - and a killer.   When their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident. They have been trapped by someone out there in the dark, someone who clearly wants one of them dead. With eight hours until dawn, the six friends must escape, or figure out which of them is the target. But is there a liar among them? Buried secrets will be forced to light and tensions inside the RV will reach deadly levels. Not all of them will survive the night... Things I Liked:   1. The premise was very interesting! I have read and immensely enjoyed the  Good Girls trilogy by Holly Jackson and so, this book, set over a night during a road trip where six high scho...

 Hello Loves!  Getting back to sharing my favourite reads of 2022.  Before we jump into adult fiction and historical fiction and literary fiction, I thought let's go age wise and get the kid lit and YA books out of the way. I didn't read a whole lot from this particular genre but the ones I did read I loved a lot and they deserve a post of their own.  So let's go.  In no particular order, here are some my favourite books from YA and Kid-Lit:  1. I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys: I adore everything this author ever writes. She exclusively writes historical fiction, set in turbulent times usually and from the perspective of young people. This book took us to a part of the world and a time period I knew next to nothing about, apart from the very, very basic facts. I recommend pretty much all of her books and this one is so so good.  I have a done a full review, so I won't go on about it. You can read it HERE .  2. Heartstopper Vol. I to IV by Alice...

 Hello Loves!  The weekend is here and it's a grey and gloomy one in my corner of the world.  I don't mind it one bit. Not at all!  I hope to curl up with a good book or two.  And watch something spooky and fun (if I can find something suitably spooky and scary).  But reading is mostly all sorted.  :) The Firebird by Saikat Majumdar:   For ten-year-old Ori, his mother’s life as a theatre actor holds as much fascination as it does fear. Approaching adolescence in an unstable home, he is haunted by her nightly stage appearances and the suspicion and resentment her profession evokes in people around her, at home and among their neighbours. Increasingly consumed by an obsessive hatred of the stage, Ori is irrevocably drawn into a pattern of behaviour that can only have catastrophic consequences. Political bullies, actors, hairdressers, set boys and backstage crew make up the world of The Firebird, a visceral exploration of a young boy stumbling into a...

  Book: This Golden State  Author: Marit Weisenberg  Pages: 372 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  The Winslow family lives by five principles: 1. No one can know your real name. 2. Don’t stay in one place too long. 3. If you sense anything is wrong, go immediately to the meeting spot. 4. Keeping our family together is everything. 5. We wish we could tell you who we are, but we can’t. Please—do not ask. Poppy doesn’t know why her family has been running her whole life, but she does know that there are dire consequences if they’re ever caught. Still, her curiosity grows each year, as does her desire for real friends and the chance to build on something, instead of leaving behind school projects, teams, and crushes at a moment’s notice. When a move to California exposes a crack in her parents’ airtight planning, Poppy realizes how fragile her world is. Determined to find out the truth, she mails in a home DNA test. Just as she starts to settle...

  Book: I Must Betray You  Author: Ruta Sepetys  Publisher: Penguin Random House  Pages: 297  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days Plot Summary:   Romania, 1989.  Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force. Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe. Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost o...

 Hello and Welcome to my first Reading Wrap-up of the Year!  January was a good reading month.  I read 16 books!  Yay!  Most of them were rather good.  I had this tiny goal with regards to my reading in January, I wanted to only read good books, to sort of set the tone for the rest of my reading year. And I think for most part I have done just that. Sure some books were less than extraordinary but well..that's just life eh?  I read literary fiction.  I read some Jhumpa Lahiri.  I did a spot of re-reading.  I read Ray.  I read some kidlit.  I read some picture books.  I read some YA.  I read translations.  It was all in all a good start to my year.  You were good January.  Thank-you and more please.  Lets jump in my reads of January.  BOOKS OF JANUARY 2022:  1. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy: I started my reading with the most perfect book. I loved it. Made my...

  Book: Last Night at the Telegraph Club  Author: Malinda Lo  Pages: 366 Read on: Kindle  Read in: 3 hours  Plot Summary:  Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father - despite his hard-won citizenship - Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day .  Things I Liked:  1. The premise of this book sounded  really  interesting. A historical fiction novel with a focus on the Chinese American community at the  height of the 'Red Scare' of the mid-1950s. A teenaged lesbian protagonist. There are very few books out there, if ...

  Hello October! Hello Durga Pujo!  Hello Festivity!  &  Hello Spooky Season!  I am happy you are back!  :)  October is a little bit of magic.  The festive seasons in India kicks off in all it's glory and Durga Pujo lights up my Bengali heart.  This year, I am hopeful and excited to actually step outside and see some of the pandals and Maa Durga.  I even have a few new clothes all lined up for Pujo.  :)  My reading too is shaped by both Durga Puja and Halloween.  So for the first half of the month and certainly during Pujo, I read some Bengali books and then its time to bring all the thriller and horror reads and going allll out with the Spooks.  I am so excited.  To kickstart my reading this month I've already started reading a creepy horror book.  This one.  The Girls are Never Gone:   The Conjuring  meets  Sadie  when seventeen-year-old podcaster Dare takes an internship in a ...