Literally Love Letters

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, originally Chitralekha Banerjee, born on 29 July 1956, in Calcutta, is an Indian-American author, poet, and speaker. She has written novels, poems, and prose that deal with contemporary American and Indian lifestyles, experiences and challenges faced by women, immigration, mythology, and retelling of mythology, and history. She has won numerous awards like the American Book Award, Light of India Award, Houston Literary Award, Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and Premio Scanno to list a few. Chitra Banerjee is also an activist for education and domestic violence. She is part of many organizations which work for the benefit of the underprivileged and victims of abuse. The majority of the poems written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni deal with patriarchy. She has painted patriarchy as a dominant force, property rights, controlled by the father then, husband, the urge for a son, and women’s efforts for the sake of the husband even at the cost of their own mental and...

  You know how social media is both a boon and a bane? On the one hand, it helps you research home remedies for a cold but on the other hand, Google also tries its hardest to convince you that you might be suffering from some rare terminal disease. Do you get the picture? Bookstagram is just that. While on the one hand, you discover the most underrated books which are the magic gateway to perfect romance, puzzle fit better halves, toe-curling smut, gut-wrenching situations, and spine-straightening plots, at the same time it’s also the Ultimate Spoiler Pit. So, when I read a comment about how the male main character is always behaving like some kind of mafia don when in actuality, he is just another high schooler - granted, his family owns the school which gives him a certain degree of…. power? Importance? He is still treated quite normally. At least normally as far as his situation goes. Either way, the comment made me wary and extra alert of Crew’s character. I dissected eac...

    Right, so this book here is the perfect mixture of smutty rom-com and I am not joking. At all. It’s short and to the point meaning there is no straying away from the main topic, which is the love story of two enemies . The female lead, Mae Garten is a well-known model, and an absolute stunner according to both her and the male lead. The male lead, October Calhoun is a renowned football player. The genres include enemies to lovers , opposites attract but also like attracts like , a smudge of past trauma maybe, and friends with benefits .   Mae and October are childhood enemies . And I am not talking about I-don’t-like-my-next-door-neighbour-at-all kinda enemies. They hate, no LOATHE each other. And Mae does it with passion and dedication because of a certain childhood grudge. On top of that, she takes pride in annoying and troubling October. October for the most part is just retaliating but he still does his own bit of insulting and pranking and tomf...

    Oh I was so sure when I saw the cover of this book that it was gonna be another romcom.   Mushy sweetness, a happily ever after, a lot of goofiness, and secondhand embarrassment (I don’t know why I get secondhand embarrassment every time I read a rom-com) were some of the things I expected when I began reading Fangirl. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Really.   The story revolves around Cath Avery , an Omaha-based girl who has to move to Nebraska to attend University, against her wishes. If you think it’s because of parental pressure, nop. It’s because Cath’s twin Wren has had enough of a life of being ‘one of the twins’, and wishes for change. Wren wants to have more freedom, be her own person, make more friends, and expand her small-town world. Cath, however, is more than reluctant, very much against, and borderline petrified about this new idea. Despite Cath’s disagreement, Wren convinces their Dad who pretends to be enthusiastic for their s...

  Better than the Movie s.   A romantic comedy genre book written by Lynn  Painter. *sigh* Hear meowt, Guys, I am not really sure how I feel about this book. Like really honestly. It made me wonder whether maybe rom-coms are not my cup of tea, which is weird because I like most books that I read even if they’re not mainstream-approved. But this is genuinely my first time reading a mainstream-approved book that didn’t quite match up to my expectations, although I'm not quite sure what I was expecting in the first place. The female lead, Elizabeth Buxbaum, is a girl with many fairytale perceptions of love, which is maybe not a bad thing, but combined with her poor judgment skills, lack of thinking from another person’s point of view, stubborn attitude, and some insecurities, she becomes quite the trying character. No major issues with our male lead Wes Bennett . In fact, I feel like he got the short end of the stick. *insert doubtful face emoticon* The s...

  I know without a doubt a single doubt that Elle Kennedy’s The Deal is gonna be a lifelong favorite of mine. I can say it with full confidence. The POV? Brutally honest. The plot? Simple yet engaging. The characters? Extremely deep and detailed. The romance? 10/10 babes. The friendship? The sisterhood? The brotherhood, bromance? Perfect! (The smut was pretty good too in case you were wondering) The tropes in this book would be Enemies to Lovers, Fake dating, Opposites attract, and Sports romance. Both the main characters have traumas that they have gotten over but I believe traumas like bad memories are quick to rise to the surface of the mind at the slightest provocation. The female main character is a victim of SA and the male main character has a nutcase, I mean, a father with mental issues. But the good thing is that their trauma isn’t exactly what the story revolves around, at least not for Hannah. The first in the Off-Campus Series, The Deal, is the story of music majo...