Book Review: It’s All In The Planets
First things first. Three things that made me pick the book up: one its a Westland book, my experience says they pick good stories, second Preeti Shenoy is the only woman in the top five best selling Indian writers so I decided to take the plunge and third the cover is decent, not great but not bad either. My takeaway: Book publishing is still a business, got to print what sells.
It’s All In The Planets is Shenoy’s 10th book and is a contemporary romance. The story covers two main protagonists – 32-year old Nidhi and 27-year old Aniket with a plethora of supportive characters like Aniket’s girlfriend – Trish, his geek friend – Subbu, Nidhi’s stepmom – Tara and her fiancé – Manoj. The entire book is a chapter wise narration of the events from Nidhi and Aniket’s point-of-view. The two meet on a train journey from Bengaluru to Chennai and thus begins an unusual friendship journey.
Aniket, a techie, is madly in love with Trish, an upcoming model, and can do anything to be with her. Trish on the other hand does like Aniket but has a long list of things she wants to change about him starting with his potbelly. Nidhi, an ex-corporate employee turned writer, on the other hand has a socially perfect man in Manoj but do they connect superficially or at the core is something that is questionable. Aniket befriends Nidhi and convinces her to become his fitness and relationship coach and that is where the twists start coming in Aniket’s life as well as the book.
It’s All In The Planets is in most parts mediocre. It has a very flat story line and the climax is predictable from the blurb itself. There are no surprises or even shocks (except one concerning Trish) or exciting moments, that make you sit up and read more. Shenoy’s writing too for most of the book is flat except somewhere in the middle where she does manage to rattle some emotions in the reader’s heart. But not good enough to make the reader fall in love with the character/s. The way chapters are narrated from both Aniket and Nidhi’s POV is interesting but at the same time there is lot of repetition which you tend to skip.
All in all, It’s All In The Planets is not a great read but yes you can pick it up if you want to read a simple, average love story. Though if you are a single woman in a metro or a newbie blogger there are definitely some spinster pad and writing goals Nidhi can give you. In fact I really liked what her home in Bengaluru was described to be. Won’t mind having one like that myself 🙂
Title: It’s All In The Planets
Author: Preeti Shenoy
Publisher/ Imprint: Westland Books
Pages: 304
Genre/ Sub-Genre: Fiction/ Romance
Rating: 2.75 of 5.00
Read the reviews of other books rated 2 star by Team TP HERE
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