Everyone has a story has a perfect title. All the readers adore stories., be it fiction or non-fiction. A brilliant title and a simple yet attractive cover. To be honest, I didn’t even hear about the book until the day I stumbled across an article declaring how the book has sold 100,000 copies.
It was a wow moment for typical Indian authors usually, struggle with selling even a thousand copies. I read more about the book. I read the reviews, and that’s where my fears began.
A lot of reviews said that the book is good but nothing unusual. It’s average. I just wished it wasn’t.
The book’s blurb says that it’s a story of four people – Kabir, Meera, Nisha and Vivaan. All of them are from different professions and end up meeting in a cafe where their lives get intertwined. Okay. That sounded interesting.
Here’s what I felt after reading the book – Everyone Has A Story.
Writing style
The author’s writing is very good. Some sentences are beautifully constructed, and some lines are just wow. It’s a delight to read just because of the sentence. But what about the story of everyone has a story?
2. Plot
As much as I wished the story was good, it wasn’t. ‘Everyone has a story’ has so many unbelievable and abrupt things that you’re going to feel disgusted with them. Think about a man telling you he sat in the hospital for eight months without ever making a trip to home? Does that sound real? He wasn’t sick by the way.More than that, it sounded as if it was exactly copied from The Choice by Nicholas Sparks, which happens to be one of my favorite novels.
And I am a true believer of the line that good artists copy, great artists steal and have no issues with the fact that the outline of the climax seemed to be taken exactly from there. But I wish it would have been that beautifully presented or at least matched 2% of what The choice makes you feel at that instance.
Was there just one similarity I found? Nada but I don’t mind.
What pissed me off was the unrealistic events. At one time, this guy feels like he’s in love with a woman and want his every moment to be spent with her. Next moment, he goes to this girl and tells her that he can never love her because he is still haunted by something else. Then the very next moment, he is again in desperate love with this woman. How do you change your feelings so strongly within a few pages? Like how?
3. Characters
The book says it’s a story of four people and it’s literally that. No other character is even noticeable in this book except for a little girl who pops up for a minute.
But that’s fine. The problem happened when out of these four, only two characters were there. The rest of the two were just sidekicks with a role even smaller than that of a sidekick. How do you promote it to be a story of friendship and love then, when you don’t give any attention to these two people and just talk about love?
The characters are plain… one girl is running behind people for a story, one boy who wants to travel the world, another boy who owns a Kafe and is a friend of this story seeker and another girl whose secret doesn’t even make a suspense in the story for even two pages.
Overall, there’s so much wrong with this book – Everyone has a story. While reading this book in a cafe, I was asked by a friend working beside me about what makes me so sad. This book! I am so disappointed in this book. When I heard a book was selling so good, I expected something good, but I guess all I got was that I need to stalk the marketer who helped in selling this book because everyone has a story has no story to sell. Just a couple of beautiful sentences bound together in a story I would never even want to remember again.
My ratings for Everyone Has A Story
2/5 stars
Hello Vinod
I so wished you would have read the review before leaving a comment. But when do people do that when they comment just to earn a backlink (which btw you didn’t)?
FYI I haven’t had a single person who has ACTUALLY read the book in my circle and liked it. I am wondering about the lack of good books in your life that you loved this one. Try picking a good novel or at least figuring out which one you can really enjoy and which one you just praise for the sake of your regular blog commenting activity.
Hello Vinod
I have been running this blog for over 3 years. I can pretty much guess when a person reads the review and when he doesn’t. I am not saying I am always right but I almost always am.
And I like saying what I feel so I don’t really care about how to welcome somebody on my blog or anywhere.
I agree people may have different opinions about the books but the books that have holes in their plot is bound to get similar kind of reviews and all the people I know who read the book, agree that it’s not the book worth reading even for an hour. I wonder what made you love it.