If It’s Not Forever. It’s Not Love
Authors: Durjoy Datta and Nikita Singh
If It’s Not Forever It’s Not Love book description on Goodreads:
If you die tomorrow, what would your last words be?
It’s just another afternoon in Deb’s life, when a powerful blast rips across the heart of Delhi – Chandni Chowk. He is unhurt, but emotionally scarred. Haunted by the blast for many days, he seeks redemption. One day, while wandering near the blast site, he finds a half-burnt diary, written by someone who died on that fateful day.
The burnt diary entrusts Deb with a strange responsibility – the last words of a dead man.
Shrey, his best buddy since college, and Avantika, his girlfriend, unknowingly join him on his road trip, as he tries to put together the pieces of the dead guy’s intriguing story.
Pardon my use of comma in the title of this post. As far as my understanding goes, that is how you structure a sentence. But if you carefully look at the cover of the book, there is a ‘period’ that breaks the title of the book into two halves, not a comma!
That indeed, had put me off a little, but I started reading the book nonetheless.
Characters and Plot
This story is about Deb, who survives the Chandni Chowk blast and also finds a diary at that exact place shortly after the incident. He reads it and then sets out on a journey with Avantika (his girlfriend), Shrey (his best friend) and Tiya (Shrey’s date, joins them later) to let the worthy person know about the untimely demise of the owner of the diary.
The story is a continuation of the life of Deb and Avantika, and is a part of a series by the author that revolves around the love-life of Deb and Avantika. However, since the story focused much on the love-story of another person other than these two, the parts in which Deb states their love-life totally seemed incoherent to the plot. Yes, we know that they have been together for all these years. Yes, we understand that Deb loves Avantika, very, very much. But it’s not their story that we want to hear. It’s of someone else. I would have appreciated if the author(s) mentioned Avantika a little less.
Shrey and Tiya were two completely unnecessary characters that the authors seemed to have accidentally let loose in the story. They were irritating at times and the jokes cracked by them only annoyed me. The story would have been better without them.
My Thoughts
The book should have come out with a rating (or was there one? If yes then enlighten me, because I didn’t see one on the copy I have) because there were a few adult scenes that were not appropriate for all age brackets.
And yes, the editing. It shattered all my expectation to million pieces. I read in one of Durjoy Datta’s blog posts that he never revises his manuscripts. But what about the editors? The draft absolutely needed a thorough proof-reading, because there were so many typos and misused grammar that it hurt. Seriously, we expect more than this from the books published by a publishing house that’s rapidly flourishing.
The book cover was beautiful. It was one of the few reasons why I went for the book. But then, like they say, never judge a book by it’s cover!
Rating: 2.5/5
