Author– Nikita Singh
Book– Letters To My Ex
Previous Works– Like A Love Song , Every Time It Rains
Publishers– HarperCollins India
Number of Pages– 138
Format– Paperback
Blurb-
‘It feels like I’m on autopilot; I have no control over anything. The pain of losing you is so crippling that I can barely hold pieces of myself together. The slightest nudge could break me. But somehow, my possessed brain knows what I need. It’s telling me to stick to my choice, to stay away from you, to open a Word document and bleed on paper, try to throw up all my jumbled thoughts in form of words, collect all disconnected facts, try to make sense of it all.’
From the bestselling author of Like a Love Song and Every Time It Rains, a story of heartbreak and things left unsaid…
Review-
Letters to my ex by Nikita Singh is a book about breakup, efforts to move on and then finding yourself at the place you started.
The reason I picked this book for review was because I could relate to the blurb mentioned, it gave the idea of a broken soul who is trying to get her pieces together and that is exactly why any reader would pick this book. In the current age of heart breaks and rebounds, I did think the book would be helpful.
The story revolves around the love life of Nidhi, who dared to walk away from the man she loved, on the day of their engagement. Its written in the form of a few unsent letters and few conversations between Nidhi and Abhay.
The title is an apt choice and its wonderful how Nikita Singh could write an entire book with letters and conversations only.
A positive aspect of this book, it encourages writing your thoughts, so that you get a better view of what you feel.
Ratings-
Cover- 2 star
Title- 5 star
Blurb- 2 star
Plot- 1 star
Writing and Presentation- 2 star
Overall- 2.4 stars out of 5
The book sports a beautiful design as its cover, that displays a stack of letters with flowers on them. Despite the fact that the cover is beautiful, it’s ironic because none of those letters, mentioned in the book, were written on paper. They were a bunch of Microsoft word documents and e-mail conversations.
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The content is repetitive as the protagonist writes about the same feelings again and again, but each time with a different wordplay. The same way academics drag their essays to reach the word limit.
If you happens to be a facts person, this book is not for you. The start was intriguing, giving somewhat of a popular-guy-introvert-girl kind of clichéd vibes. The story picked some pace when the breakup happened, the author knew what to write and how to write and with the loads of thoughts being processed by Nidhi made it interesting to know her reasons. But then the revelation happened and the reasons were highly disappointing, giving a rather weak foundation the entire plot.
The characters were no fun, nor were they rational enough to be realistic. The protagonist Nidhi, was someone emotionally unevolved and her actions had no explanation and ever so dubious. Keeping the wordplay and the sugar-coating aside, she couldn’t take it when Abhay had sorted out everything about his life and she hadn’t. The character Abhay, lacks the basic human emotions like anger and disappointment and shows the signs of being truly affected just once, that too in a rather cold way response that one may substitute with anger.
Talking about the expectations from the book, I had many, it was my first try at reading the said bestselling authors of India and I was pretty much excited to know what the hype was about.
The blurb gives the conception that the book is a rather empowering story of dealing with your emotions at a hard time and moving on from a relationship, thus making it an ideal pick for someone who is feeling the same. Unfortunately, the book disappoints. It rather passes off as a breakup without explanation, a few attempts to move on and then going back to the same person you ran away from.
It is a clear example of how assumptions, overthinking and lack of communication can ruin a relationship.
The book would have been appreciated had it been a young woman’s journey about moving on, with some life lessons or at least a plot to offer.
The letters might make sense to someone who is pouring out their inner turmoil but its better to write about your own feelings rather than reading Nidhi’s.
Reviewed by- Banaja Prakashini
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About Nikita Singh-
Nikita Singh is the bestselling author of ten novels, including Every Time It Rains and Like a Love Song. She is also a contributing writer to The Backbenchers series and the editor of two collections of short stories, 25 Strokes of Kindness and The Turning Point.
Born in Patna and raised in Indore, Nikita worked in the book publishing industry in New Delhi for a few years before moving to New York for her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at The New School. Nikita lives in Manhattan, where she does digital content and marketing for a solar energy company. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram (@singh_nikita) or on Facebook.