Bookreview: Blemishing the odds

Name: Blemishing the odds

Author: Harish Penumarthi

Genre: Coming of Age, Young Adult.

Language: English

No. of  Pages: 174

Release date: October 23, 2016

ISBN: 9384315508

My Rating: 2 out of 5

Note: I got this book from the author in exchange for HONEST review.


BLEMISHING THE ODDS:

                                  The story starts with prologue, kids urging their father to tell a story about his childhood, and thus we enter into the world of ragav. A typical story about back bencher who sucks at studies and hated by everyone meets a girl, falls in love, a family tragedy that motivates him, seeks redemption by studying harder, scoring top rank, getting a scholarship,  pursuing higher studies, marring love of his life.
                                  That's pretty much the whole story, the blurb and prologue give away the entire thing. There's nothing much left to keep the page turning, character and dialogues are artificial, lacks a level of emotional geninuity. Other than few nostalgic moments the story seems so surreal, one cliche after another, a subplot that dosen't move the story. As coming of age young adult genre, author has a vast area to explore about puberty, sex, sexual knowledge and lot more. but author failed to do so instead he decided to go with a single line .
                                                       
                                           "girls matured, not mentaly but physically"


                                  The language treatment is so amateurish, most places feel like word by word translations of an Indian writing. Most debut Indian authors make two common mistakes,

                                  One, Language treatment, English language structure differ much from Indian languages. word by word translation of colloquial idioms and phrases are annoying and won't work. In most case, the emotions and jokes lost their meaning and value during this translation,


                                  Two, Showing off their vocabulary skills, some authors think using complex words make them good writers which is plain awful. Writing is not just about words, one should have proper knowledge of history and usage of the word, who uses the words "fortnight" and "blucking" in the same line.


                                 Above mistakes can be easily solved with proper editing. This book had the worst editorial team. tons and tons of typos, grammar and punctuation errors. even with the blurb in the behind, how come no one checks that in editorial and publishing dept. I hope the author changes these issues in his future works.

                                 Overall, worth a shot, I appreciate the author's effort on trying a new genre. All the best for his future works.



                                                                                                                  --- Sidharth.