The One You Cannot Have – Book Review

I have read many, many books over more than a decade – English, Gujarati, Fiction, Thriller, Action, some non-fiction and always dreamed of writing a book review but never picked up a pen, until now (picked up my keyboard, in literal words!).

The book I recently read did not really touch my soul or leave a lasting impression like many other books have. But, today morning, without giving much thought, I simply opened a word doc and started typing. Perhaps because I am more confident in writing now or because this was an easy read, it was also easy for me to write a review. Nevertheless, I am stepping into a new genre of writing.

Name of the book: The One You Cannot Have

Author: Preeti Shenoy

As the title suggests, it is about an unfinished love story. A young girl and a young boy, Shruti and Aman, find magical love in their college days and spend the best 4 years of their lives. Bunking classes, grabbing every opportunity to be together, working on projects together, etc is surely something we all can relate to. Dreaming about having a future together, caring unconditionally for each other and understanding even a flick of an eye made them ‘made for each other’ soulmates. Only until life took its own course.

In present day, they both live different lives. Shruti is married to a very nice guy from her community chosen by her parents and Aman is wrapping up his 2 years of life in the U.K., which he had chosen as respite after his harsh break-up. Shruti is fairly happy with her marriage and has buried (or let’s say has tried very hard and she thinks she is successful until circumstances change) Aman and the time they had spent. On the other hand, Aman is still single and has failed any attempt to even think of a relationship.

Aman moves to Bangalore in the hope to start a new life, meets his old boss who is a friend (Vikram) and joins his company to help him get a new project hit the ground. Knowing of his return to India, Anjali contacts him well before he was to fly and fixes a date. Aman agrees reluctantly only to be polite and to get her off his back. Anjali is Deepika’s (Vikram’s wife’s) cousin, works at a magazine company as a writer. She has her own column and writes about day-to-day struggles / emotional journeys of women. One date leading to another, Aman and Anjali get along well, and Anjali has finally found a guy who fits all her requirements of a life partner. She gives out clear signals of being interested in a relationship, but Aman is terrified. He likes Anjali. After a lifetime, someone has genuinely made him laugh and made him feel important. He likes the upbeat, full-of-life, successful, independent and beautiful Anjali but his past, his pain stops him from making any advances.

Shruti, at the same time, faces a head-first fall in her marriage when Rishabh finds out about her relationship with Aman. Rishabh knows that the relationship ended before marriage but the fact that Shruti lied to him when he had asked her about being in any previous relationship, eats Rishabh from inside. He can no longer trust Shruti and feels to have been wronged and cheated. Shruti confesses, apologises, gets angry, becomes outrageous, tries everything she can think of, but nothing eases Rishabh’s pain. Rishabh’s parents’ visit during the same time complicates things even further. After being broken from inside for months, she finally decides to write to Aman. She strongly believes it is only him who can pull her out from this darkness.

What happens after is for you to find out by reading the book. The author has given excellent plot to the story by taking a reader through past and present times parallelly as that’s how real life is, isn’t it? We never really leave our past, it’s always with us – only buried, sometimes even forgotten, until something triggers it. The author takes us inside the minds of each key character and has put best effort to personify each of them. The language used is quite colloquial and some readers might find it naïve. The tone and tense of the language gets monotonous at many points and inclusion of a lot of not required / redundant information like literally describing a conversation in passive past tense frequently throughout the book can get to a reader. The author could have used that space to express deeper emotions and essence of conversation rather than simply translating it. I found those passages boring and empty. Having said so, the curiosity that was created kept me gripped on until I finished the book.

Have a happy read…

You can buy the book at https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-You-Cannot-Have/dp/9383260688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535099333&sr=8-1&keywords=the+one+you+cannot+have