Jella, a Jellopus, is the rightful ruler of Zypher but the evil Chiro has taken over Zypher. Jella goes on an interesting journey to win her kingdom back. Jella and a scientist called Marina somehow join bodies to become Merjella. Jella with her friends Qwerty and Bingo go to the surface and interact with humans. They meet a person called Ryan Catchmore who catches fish and finds other ways of catching fish.
It takes just spilt second for things to go from good to awful or from awful to good’ The line captures it all. The book by Rupa Gulab is about deeper realities, fraught with memories and emotions. But a beautiful lesson it tries to give ‘amidst all the chaos lay a placid calm’. Anu’s life is all chaotic, as the book says her life sucks! A teenager’s mid life crisis when one is worried about body image, boyfriend issues and yes, academics! Anu’s story starts from the school where she is in detention (as always!) and ends with a sweet note where she finally embraces reality. Anu is a cry baby. She wants attention! The story revolves around her frustrations towards her teachers, crushes and most importantly her sister: Diya. Diya is better, smarter and attractive. She is always the one to get appreciated and loved.
Just as earthly time stops when the characters unfurl their journey across the magical land of Catriona, so does the reader’s sense of time as one rapidly navigates one’s way through the silvery forest of ivory trees, mysterious caves with mythical gods, through lakes containing lotus embedded with emeralds and through a landscape lighting up with a multitude of characters. It’s a place ‘where one grows faster and lives longer’. It’s a place where earthy metaphors are conjured but the limits of their earthy meanings are challenges. The story centers around two young women Sara and Cristina, two young women.
The other book being reviewed is very different in its genre and appeal: no endearing canine warms the pages of this dark thriller. Indeed, the very cover of Lucy Whitehouse’s Keep You Close has a burning matchstick that might as well be a metaphor for the reading experience on offer: incandescent, thrilling, terrifying. Those readers who liked Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl will definitely enjoy this well-crafted whodunit. Marianne Glass, an artist, falls to her death from the upstairs window of the family home in Oxford, in what is assumed to be a tragic accident. Her estranged friend, Rowan Winter, is not convinced, though, knowing very well that Marianne has always had acute vertigo, and would never have gone so close to the roof’s edge.
If you know a dog-person, or a human owned entirely by dogs, this is a book you want to share with them straight away. While I was reading Jonathan Unleashed by the luminously witty Meg Rosoff, that peerless writer about children, young folk and dogs, I was casting sidelong glances at my sons, hoping that by some magic, they’d transform into dogs, just for a week or so. Just for a bit, I should love to be in the company of canines like the super-intelligent ‘city’ collie Dante and the sweet-natured spaniel Sissy who light up this book with the ‘Byzantine quality of their inner lives’.
We meet our hero Subroto Bandhopadhyay, Stoob to you and I, on a holiday in Thailand with his friend Ishani and their families. While we expect the sun, sand and surf to keep the twelve-year-old occupied, it isn’t turning out to be as relaxing as Stoob would like—he has an embarrassing story to narrate, an incident, which involves a girl, Mala Kapoor. Stoob is turning out to be a fun and engaging series. Stoob, Ishani and Rehan are such well chalked out characters, with lots in common, yet plenty to set apart one from another. Rehan is your typical nerd who googles everything and seems to know way lot more than what everyone else around does.