Book Review : Dream’s Sake

“What keeps your hopes intact?”, you ask. “Dreams” comes the answer. “You should always have one!”, we hear them say, “you should keep your dreams alive. “ And that’s what most of us do. We cling on to our dreams and never let go. They keeps us going, recharging our worn-out systems whenever the stark realities of the big, bad world begin to make their presence felt. But where does one draw the line? To what extent should one go to make one’s dream come true? What if one’s dreams clash with those of others? Come and witness a battle of dreams in Jyoti Arora’s debut novel, Dream’s Sake.

Dream’s Sake unfolds the story of four friends, Aashi, Abhi, Priyam and Sid each of whom steps into the adult life with a baggage from the past. Aashi, who has just moved into a humble locality in Delhi with her widowed mother, has still not recovered from the shock of her father’s sudden death.  However, the memories of the past are not potent enough to deter her  from building castles in the air. She thrives upon the hope that her dreams will one day metamorphose into a shimmering reality, one which will free her from the tyrannical barbs of her middle class life.  Her neighbours, Priyam and Abhi on the other hand have made their peace with their lowly existence. Orphaned in their teenage years this brother sister duo has succumbed to vagaries of life. Sid has grown up to believe that it was his father’s unfaithfulness and negligence that compelled his mother to end her life. He shuns his father’s wealth and finds solace in Abhi and Priyam’s companionship. Romance starts brewing in this little group of their’s which results in happiness for some and broken hearts for the others. In the end a few dreams are realized, a few are shattered and trampled upon leading to disastrous consequences.

This novel had a decent storyline. However, I’ll have to admit that it failed to “wow” me. The story lacks freshness and towards the end of the book I could vividly picturise scenes from a melodramatic Bollywood movie of the nineties being projected on a theatre screen. The story has its fair shares of twists and turns but it tends to become quite predictable in certain places. The characters are anything but eccentric and I could easily relate to them. The book has been written in simple English although I came across several sentences which were unnecessarily cramped with “fancy words”. Simpler words could have easily done the trick and perhaps even conveyed the author’s thoughts a lot more effectively. The aforementioned points notwithstanding the author should be lauded for churning out a reasonably good piece of fiction in her very first try.

In all I would say that this books makes for a light, quick and romantic read.

An extract from the book:

He can be as good as he wants to be and I’ll be as bad as I need to be! We’ll see where it all ends up,” says Aashi.

To know more about the author log onto www.jyotiarora.com

Rating: 2.5/5

Category: General Fiction.

Publisher: V&S Publishers

Pages: 266

Price: 195

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Thank you, Jyoti for sending me an autographed copy of the book. All the best for your future endeavours.