REVIEW OF CANVAS OF DREAMS by JAYA MURTY

What happens when the colour runs out?

'I did not want to talk to him at all. I could sense the pain he had once caused me returning in full force when I heard him speak.

I felt desolate.'

         Riya is a successful art curator and she has worked very hard to be where she is today, battling a bad marriage and memories of Ryan, her childhood sweetheart. Ryan; the man who promised himself to her, and then walked away.

          On a work related trip to Singapore a decade later, she bumps into Ryan again and all her carefully planned life is thrown for a toss as Ryan still has the power to send her heart and senses reeling just by being in the room beside her. No matter how much she tells herself this is the man that betrayed her and chose Sia over her, his attraction for her never wavers.

          She does the only thing she knows, she runs away. For Riya, is haunted by her dreams; dreams of a painful past. Will Ryan be able to lay her nightmares to rest or will he just add to them?

The story has been told through the eyes of Riya and maybe that is why she comes across as a better developed character. Even though it is the love story of two star crossed lovers; at the end of the day I felt it was Riya’s story and her coming to terms with what she was and what she had become. I appreciate the way Jaya Murty has taken Riya on this journey through her interactions with the various men in her life.

          I would have liked the character of Ryan to have been a bit more developed and even the reason why he left her didn’t quite come across that well.

         This is the debut novel of Jaya Murty and I believe it to be a strong debut. For me at the end of the day it was the story of Riya and it was a well told story of the passage of a young girl becoming a strong woman.

REVIEW OF ‘TROUBLE HAS A NEW NAME’ BY ADITE BANERJIE

                Weddings can be a magical occasion and Indian weddings even more so. Beautiful model Rayna Dutt has come to an Indian Ocean island to attend her best friend’s wedding. However, behind her mesmerizing smile there lies a pool of pain and heartache. Ditched by her boyfriend on the verge of her moving in with him; she proposes a make believe engagement to Neel Arora the owner of the resort where she is staying to attend her friend’s wedding. She does this to get away from the press, inquisitive friends and relatives from her past and to save face in front of the very man who ditched her. Somewhere is all this Rayna realizes that she wants more than just a pretend engagement. She wants a real relationship.

                Suave, sophisticated, successful Neel; who hides his guilty demons away behind a mask of efficiency and indifference. He is blown away by Rayna but is too scared to admit it; sure that his past will catch up with him over here too and destroy everything.

                

                Will Neel be able to conquer his fears and go to Rayna before she gives up on him?

                This is the second book that I have read of Adite Banerjies and yet again I was captivated by her settings and her descriptions. They were beautiful and just pulled you in. Neel’s anguish at his sister’s condition was palpable and the strength of Rayna came through in her ability to deal with whatever life threw her way. The passion between them is electric and fairly bounced off the pages. What really stayed with me though was the spirit Rayna brings to the situation even when she is absolutely down in the dumps and at her lowest.

 She gets up; the smile is flashed once again for ‘the show must go on.’