Quick Reviews of Two Quick n Easy Reads

Here are a couple of easy breezy reviews for a couple of easy reading books.

I was in a bit of a reading slump and in no mood for Toni Morrison, which was my planned read for this week. Instead I picked up Seduced by Murder by Saurbh Katyal and I enjoyed it very much. Like you can guess from the title, it’s a murder mystery.

Vishal is a private detective who is called by his former love Aditi when her unlikable brother-in-law Anil is murdered one night after a family party. Soon Vishal finds himself deeply embedded within the family – all of whom had very sound reasons for murdering Anil.

There’s not too much to say about the story, except that the murderer is not easily predicted and there’s tons of corruption and sex piled on in the book to make it a gritty and engrossing read. It’s a short book, but highly entertaining, and I enjoyed it very much.

I hope this book will be the first of a series because I really liked Vishal and I think there is a lot of potential to develop his character in further books.

Highly recommend for lovers of crime who are on the lookout for some Indian crime-noir.

The next book I read was His Runaway Royal Bride by Tanu Jain. When I accepted this book for review, I assumed (wrongly) that this was a historical romance.

I was a bit disappointed by the contemporary setting, and by the heroine, who quite possibly was the most insecure, whiny girl I have ever read. However, usually when I read a romance, I always come away annoyed at the overbearing hero, but here, it was quite the opposite. I loved the hero, he was a really nice guy whereas I think the heroine really needed to stop being so self-pitying, stand up to all the bullies, and just have a frank, open conversation with the hero to solve all her issues.

The book was short but I think the plot was stretched a bit thin with a little recycling of the same plot point, but at the same time I appreciate that unnecessary miscommunications/fights/jealous exes weren’t stuffed into the book merely for padding.

Overall, it was a pleasant romance and in spite of the royal setting fairly down to earth. My expectations from books that are pure romances aren’t very high, this book thoroughly met all my expectations.

Huge thanks to the author/publisher of these books for sending them to me for review consideration.


A Word About my Ratings

I should probably mention this in a more central place however, while writing this review, I realized I need to actually let people know what I mean by my ratings (the rating box at the bottom of my reviews).

I enjoyed both these books very much. Crime is very much my genre of choice, and practically any well-written crime novel will get high scores from me. Romances are a bit more tricky, but I tend to overlook clichéd plot points and give high scores if the book is enjoyable, and if the protagonists don’t annoy me too much.

So, do these high scores mean they are the next nominees for the Man Booker? No and no! It just means that my experience of reading these books was great, and there weren’t any weak links which forced me to subtract from the total score.

The writing was good, serviceable, and both these books were fun reads. They lived up to the author’s intentions, there weren’t any obvious irritations, and they were well-written.

Does this rating system make sense to you? How do you rate your books when you review them?

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