Second Spring Book Review

Title : Second Spring
Author : Sandhya Jane
Number of Pages : 285
Genre: Fiction

Synopsis and Review:

Second Spring is the debut novel by Sandhya Jane which narrates the life and happenings of Avantika a single mother, who has a strong persona and is highly successful in her profession. The book is all about the ups and downs in her life because of the love which hits her a second time, and on reading the synopsis, I felt the book will mostly reflect the hardships faced by Avantika in a innovative way but sadly I am heavily disappointed as page by page, the book felt like a daily soap or a Bollywood flick. I don't want to sound rude, but I was bored after finishing 50 pages. The story was going no where and was absolutely predictable just like any Hindi movie! First few pages made me feel may be this book has more to it than just the love, spark , infatuation and confusion episodes between Rohan and Avantika but I was wrong. The book has redundant episodes and thoughts of Avantika and Rohan. I really felt, the author should have done more work on editing and removing the repetitive lines. Avantika's son Aarav's bond with his mother was some thing I enjoyed as it showed how single mothers can get deeply attached to their kids. Other than this , I liked few tidbits like, description of the corporate atmosphere, the necessity to be quite social and the tactics one should possess to improve networking so as to have career progress. The respective episodes felt real and the author described the projects , meetings and presentations aptly as she herself works for an investment bank I believe. The intervention of Facebook and how lost friends can be searched and found is shown well. The life and episodes of Rohan and Avantika during the time they spent together, and after they part their ways covers 90% of the book. It is possible that the turn out of all the events can be a real thing, but the way it was narrated, I felt I was watching some hindi movie from 80s - 90s.

Source : here

Avantika slogs for the progress of her company and herself but it feels bad to see that she shifts to Missouri (USA) only to forget her love.  By the end of the book, the only thing I could appreciate was that the protagonist Avantika carefully and confidently chose what she wanted , with out falling in the booby trap of emotions once again but even this felt like, I was watching the climax of the movie Hum Dil De Chuke sanam . The book oscillates between Rohan and Avantika's diary pages thrown between infinite number of meetings and office hours. Rohan's family pressures, forced marriage and orthodox beliefs are all highlighted which are day to day problems in India but on this date and time when things are slowly changing , I could not relish the age old story line where he sacrifices himself for arranged marriage and so many lives ultimately get destroyed. The surprising element in the book is Rhea, a kid who is the love child of Avantika and Rohan. This surprise totally failed the story for me as once again , it got too filmy where in kids are born as easily as coffee comes out of vending machines, just by spending one passionate night together. Again it is a possible scenario but I couldn't make myself like it! Sorry to say that the book is too clichéd and I couldn't enjoy it.

I am not an author myself but there is a lacuna in this book even if it had good language and vocabulary. A weak plot, routine story line and monotonous episodes made me want more from the book.

I wish the author good luck for her future endeavours.

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