Secretly Yours is a novel from the Vikrath Khanna, author of Love Lasts Forever.
Plot :The story is about a seventeen year old Sahil who is orphaned at birth and whose dad ends his life 3 months after his mother’s death. He has always been blamed for his parents’ death by his grandmother who happens to take care of him, his brother Ayush and cousin Shweta.
He is half way through writing a book and also likes playing the guitar.
Everything goes wrong in his life all the time and his means for finding solace is by smoking, drinking ,flirting and cutting himself and bleeding out to find escape from the torments of his existence.
Sahil’s otherwise boring life takes a turn when he meets an eighteen year old Anya who comes to Musica,[ the Academy where he and a few other play and practice music], to learn guitar.
Soon he is head over heels in love with Anya.But she does not reciprocate the feeling yet is affectionate towards Sahil, which leaves him all the more confused.
He is also baffled by Anya’s behavior at times when she suddenly walks out, or rather runs away during a conversation and has no explanation for that when confronted later. Anya and her friends say that she can never fall in love with Sahil and finally she sorts of ends the relationship.
A saddened Sahil decides to turn over a new leaf by being the boy his grandma expects him to be and drives her to the hospital where they meet with an accident which claims her life. Sahil ends up in coma and when he recovers, he finds out that he can read peoples mind when he is in contact with them-through touch!
He is startled and excited at the same time for he wishes to know more about the people around him especially Anya’s feeling towards him.
In between all this, there are some gruesome murders of men and boys who are tortured, limbs mutilated and castrated. The police try hard to locate the killer / killers yet are nowhere near finding the suspect.
Does Anya reciprocate the feeling, why are those boys/ men murdered,do the police catch the killers, what becomes of the Sahil, is for you to read and find out.
When one reads the blurb on the cover, it seems that there isn’t much to expect other than what Sahil finds out about his friends, relatives and and Anya. But that’s where the author has decided to throw in a huge twist.
What starts as a regular story turns into a sort of twilight style surprise! Here we are taken aback by Anya’s revelation which comes out in the least expected phase.
My thoughts on the book…
- The book actually starts off a bit slowly by going through the life pattern of Sahil, the things he does ,his likes and dislikes, his grandma’s taunts and teases, his classmates and friends etc. It gets a bit monotonous which the author could have avoided.
- While reading the book you never know which way the story is going! You are left to wonder why Anya disappears, the reason for murder, Sameer’s[Anya’s friend] dull and disinterested looks etc. But some of them are reasoned at the end.So that is a good thing.
- The blurb talks about mind reading which really got me interested but you find only a few instances of him reading people mind! I was totally disappointed. It also talks of startling revelations which does happen somewhere in the middle of the book.
- While reading this book I was wondering how a 17 year old finds cigarettes and booze so easily and smokes and drinks in his room! Most of the time ,that is till he meets Anya, he is either smoking away or drinking to drown his problems!!!
- The chapters are small and written in a simple language.
- It deals with issues that torments teens and problems like rape and suicide and its outcomes.
- If you had read carefully, you can almost guess the ending which seems fit for this story.
If you into the fantasy genre you will like it, else just pick it up if you are looking for a casual read.There are twists and turns but very little mind reading….
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Until nest post…
