Book Review: Never Kiss Your Best Friend
Never Kiss Your Best Friend sounds like a love story that happened when it was not supposed to, like all love stories this one is special too.
“Feelings that suddenly come knocking at the door of your heart are feelings that never left the comfort of it in the first place”…
A philosophy is born out of love such as a good feeling is born out of this novel. This is the sequel to the best seller Just Friends by Sumrit Shahi which made me feel it will be inspired by famous hollywood movies where friends are friends till they accidentally or intentionally get in each others pants. The cover too is exciting and inviting.
Like all popular Chiklit novels this too didn’t disappoint me, a genre of romance which has picked up with the fast information bombarded youth; they don’t have time to read heavy stuff and a chicklit is a best way to live-up your mood swings or get over a break-up or say it with a smile to someone special. It’s catchy language, engrossing narrative style, a good dose of adult jokes, mussy romance and twisting ends makes it a fun filled and entertaining read.
Sumrit has done it well with this one though when I began reading I thought I should have read the first book to this sequel to know our characters Sumer aka Summu and Tanie aka Tan Tan better but a good book has a way of connecting with you even if it a continuation of another book. Each book is like a journey, I connect with it, I laugh, I smile but I never cry otherwise that would too melo –dramatic.
It is the age of the witty writers that is catching our precious nights when we want to watch a movie or surf our love for Facebook. Even though it is not literature it is way much fun.
It starts with Tanie, our in your face drama yet not so drama queen because of her wittiness, sharpness of mind and goof ups in life narrating her constant lock and drop battle with life.
She hates it, she loves it and she lives it.
Sumer is Tanie’s best friend and that is how I want to remember him, as a man he is much more – he is humble, kind, annoying, quite a fun filled person but he has a secret, a pain which will make you fall in love with his love story even more in the end.
We all need a friend who will drive us mad yet hold us together to pass this gigantic boring life and this is what Tanie has in Sumer. So she bumps into him after five long years and I get to know how best jaddi-buddies they were, what led to their loosing touch with their mad friendship, they kiss each other sooner or later to understand what was that about, they can sleep with each other in the same bed without getting into it, they can dance in their boxers, sneak out and puke all over a friends birthday cake and eat it too, they can do all sorts of craziness as they are friends, best friends but a kiss always complicates matters as we know it thus giving us a hope for a 21st century romance trend.
What I liked most about it is the friendship they shared, a boy- girl friendship growing into a man-woman friendship without any expectations but with pain. I kept turning the pages to know more about Tanie as a naughty teenager and Sumer as a rebellious boy who gives in to circumstances more often than we expect.
So I was enjoying the pukish rides with Tanie so far as Sumrit knows how to write, which was a delight and Rupa again has fabulous editors producing a crisp and polished romance for us. It is important for writers, no matter from which academic background, to know how to have a conversation with his readers through his characters. The key for the survival of any story is not it being read but the characters staying behind with the readers. This I have mentioned quite often in my previous reviews as I have gone through horribly written and edited stories that make me want to tear the pages and put it to some good use.
“An unlit cigarette harms more than a burnt one. A broken heart hurts less than a heart that’s not experienced love”
Classic line with the depth of love – the 21st century love – we have I think finally grown out of the white horse galloping handsome prince.
“Its funny how nobody notices that people often raise a solitary toast to happiness and down a bottle to despair”
The author must have lived his characters Sumer and Tanie in some phase of his twenty two years of life, which is quite young, otherwise it is quite difficult to come up with such in your face and real characters. More than the plot I give him a brownie for his characters, I simply loved them, specially their friendship, and it was just pure friendship.
Though nearing the dramatic climax the book had a filmy touch to it, not that I minded it a lot because it was all so well written; I enjoyed the entire story and just smiled.
I love chiklit if it is a well narrated one, it gives my knowledge hungry mind a break. And now I shall read the first part to complete the puzzle of the sequel.
Title: Never Kiss Your Best Friend
Author: Sumrit Shahi
Publisher/ Imprint:
Pages: 206
Genre/ Sub-Genre: Fiction/ Romance
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Reviewed for: Publisher
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