The Love Asana

What better day to post a review of a Mills n Book than on Valentine’s Day?

In January, when the publishers offered me a copy of this book to review, I just had to leap at the opportunity. There was a brief period during my teenage years, when I devoured M & Bs (as we called it). My friends and I had our favorite authors and we would hotly debate on which authors books were superior, and which ones were pure trash…Ah, the good times, when we actually had the time and energy to argue such things 🙂

Anyway, back to the book. This is the first M & B book set in India, with an Indian storyline and setting, and written by an Indian author. The latter is the most important aspect. There are tons of these romance novels that feature men of Asian origin (usually a Sheik of some sort), but this is a first attempt at localizing an entire genre of books to cater to Indians.

How successful is this attempt?

Vivan Parasher a self-made multi-millionaire playboy wants to take revenge on the man who betrayed his beloved sister. He gets an opportunity to destroy his enemy’s business, but when he meets his sister, his thoughts on a professional revenge get side-tracked. He decides to marry the girl and ruin her life. At first, the marriage is nothing but an elaborate PR stunt, but soon they get to know each other better and by the end of the book, they are genuinely in love.

Based on the above summary, this does sound like the stereotypical M & B book, and it is one. However, the author has written some very genuine moments, and does her best within the M & B framework.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to. Vivan and his wife Pari are stereotypes, but I was pleasantly surprised by the secondary characters, the settings and the rituals.

All in all, good weekend reading, thanks to Madison Public Relations who forwarded me a copy of this book.

And here’s wishing everybody out there a very happy Valentine’s day!