Saturday, February 01, 2014

Review- Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. by Mr. Invisible

Goodreads Summary:

Its not just a cold February morning that freezes all activity at IIT. The topper of the Computer Science batch is found hanging inside his room locked from the outside. A day later, in a fit of anxiety, his best friend erases his suicide note from his laptop, thereby obliterating the only way that could have led to understanding the reason behind such a catastrophe.

The smartest among the group of software experts asked to retrieve it finally gets hold of it, but silently gives up on finding it and withdraws with the stolen suicide letter. What is it about the letter that makes him hide it from the world? Why does he lose himself in the amaranthine ocean of agony and forgets all else on reading it? Love is life giving, but Destroyed by Ishq explores the other side of love. Are you ready to turn the page?


REVIEW:

*NOTE: We (The Readdicts) received a copy of Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. by Mr. Invisible from Srishti Publishers & Distributors in exchange for an honest review. we thank the publishing house for the book! 

Like everything, there are two consequences of first impression as well- it can either turn out to be the best or the worst. When I first came across Destroyed by 'Ishq'.., I was really intrigued by it. The titled sounds apt and is very true. Like we all know and have learned, love destroys. There was an air of mystery surrounding Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. what with it being written by a certain Mr. Invisible which, come to think of it, sounds really lame. I had thought that the book would be highly intense as every book I've read on suicide has been. But somewhere, I had a feeling it wouldn't be as great as I was expecting or hoping it to be. 

When I read books that have suicide as the main theme, I only look for one reason- whether the said suicide is justifiable or not. And in this case, it clearly wasn't. I get that love has a very uncanny way of making us suffer and feel like all the pain that we're going through is unbearable and will see no end. It sucks when you try many times but fail in love and it's simply stupid when you try hard with one person many times knowing it's going nowhere. While giving up on love seems like the best option here, giving up on life is clearly stupid and absolutely silly. Till the very end, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't connect at all with anything in Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. It was neither deep nor emotional. What this book managed to do is to give a nice wake up call alarming me that it's time I stay away from stories set in IIT or any engineering college for that matter. I just don't get the point of life there. Anyway, I'm not interested in saying anything against any students, so that can be left off. 

While Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. has a very interesting and exciting narrative technique, it would have been highly convenient to  mention at the beginning of a new point of view whose pov it is that the reader is reading from. I was irritated by the excessive use of punctuation marks, the sudden change of font for no reason whatsoever, a melange of English and Hindi and most importantly, the characters, who are what connect me to books in the first place. Sadly, if it's not clear already, I didn't like Destroyed by 'Ishq'.. to the point that I don't care about it. 

RATING:



8 comments:

  1. Such titles turn me off in the first place....I feel a book should be a literary piece suited for a global audience and not just for an Indian audience....why make the use of the over-cheesy, Hindi and much-abused word like 'Ishq' in a book which is not a regional book but an English book? What do ya say

    Plus, a good review....i can relate to what you said there by the jumble-mumble of Hindi n english words....these days, i find a lot of modern authors doing it unnecessarily which is sad in a way coz i like my books to be written in the classic style

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    1. I absolutely agree with you, Ritesh. Thank you so much for stopping by!

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  2. This is exactly why I don't really like reading books with suicide theme. They just aren't able to pull it off most of the time. Great review!

    -Kimi at Geeky Chiquitas

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  3. This is why I try to avoid suicide books. I look for the justification as well and I hate when it's lacking and I can't connect to the character or anything else in the story. It just doesn't work. Sorry this read didn't work for you, Sarika!

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    1. True true true! Thank you for stopping by, Aylee!

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  4. Aw, Aman, you're awesome, dude. Thank you!

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  5. Literally the content you have presented is can be related to me..i also have approx same story. And the love story you presented was just awosm for me... Just loved it.. Bt yeah the end was not really. Ok according to story boy was mently week so could not abe to handel the pain... Bt yeah the climax Should be far better... Did a gr8 job..

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