When Shadows Turn Dark by Vidya Anand | Book Review

Thank You for sending When Shadows Turn Dark. But my review will be honest.

Starting with the summary, I am not impressed.

I grow up while watching Bollywood movies. You cannot surprise me with this type of story.

The mystery was all over for me after reading the back page.

When Shadows Turn Dark is not that dark, but Vidya Anand has done a good job for the first book. 

What gave up the whole story?

This line from the blurb:  

A tale about the mystical world of rebirth, and much more.

What I thought the story is after reading the blurb: Might be the hero is getting the glimpses of past life.

She is having same dreams or something. They will meet and remember each other and on the name of climax, I will get some dramatic past story.

What happened: Not exactly same but quite similar.

Story of When Shadows Turn Dark

I will not talk about the story.

The story is basic love and rebirth story that we have seen many times in movies. Parallel stories. One of the past, one of the present. 

But we must not forget that there are few basic stories in the world, all others are the different take of them from the changed angles or locations or context etc..

But I would like to point out some not all mistakes. The mistakes related to plot, characters and facts.

So It Is

A painter/artist is stalking a Princess and inquiring about her in the market and no one seems to notice.

Please, do not write sentences like this- “Anirudh sarcastically replied”.

If the reply is sarcastic, I will obviously understand it.

Why people do it????

This happened in the Everyone Has A story and A Bride from Moon.

Princess falling in Love with painters

What the hell, a Princess fall in love with painter?

Okay, it happens in many Disney’s books and other books.  And it is a fantasy, I can believe it…

But it happens through a process. Not at first sight. No princess look at an unknown person and start loving her.

It happens when they both come closer because of some circumstances and get to know each other.

But whatever…

This sentence- “Anirudh rejected all the designs that Sonia had made in last two days.”

Many friends of mine are doing architect. I know, making a single design take much more time than two days.

And Sonia made more than one in two days.

When Girl write Male Characters

On the same page, what was this with Manoj that he is wishing to be a girl just to get the admiration of Anirudh.

Boys never said that type of thing even in the funny way. Or author might be indicating that he is gay.

I must also add that you do not need to make your hero that charming and God-looking that even boys start to crush on him.

You already got both the girls ready to sleep with him, and even two princesses are ready to fight each other.

It will be disastrous now that if boys also start wanting him.

Technically

Moving ahead, Anirudh and Trisha go to the palace because Anirudh wanted to see it.

But why Trisha acts like she has seen it the first time. Or is it really was her first site visit?

If yes, then how actually this Architectural farm is working, where people working on its restoration have not even visited the site.

I want to say to them

It is impossible to stop yourself from thinking. You cannot stop your mind from thinking particular thoughts. You just cannot. Sometimes OCD happens because of it.

But Anirudh does. He can stop its mind from thinking.

Yep, When shadows turn dark, he simply turns off his mind.

The Palace restoration work stop and the reason of it are that all the friends of the owner, who were investing the money, become poor.

I know how it connects but my problem is why the writer does not specifically say what happened.

I tried to overlook it

“When he entered inside her, she moaned loudly, forcing her sister, who was guarding them, to knock and remind her to keep calm.”

I thought that the room is big because the author said so. Or else the princess is moaning very high?

I know Nayanika is making plans. Her plan is working. But I do not know what exactly was her plan is.

Seduce him and fuck him in her room without closing the doors. On the same day, a neighbour’s state Prince is coming, I think it passes as a small fest at Palace.

There must be many priests, maids, workers, and people roaming in the palace.

Anyone could have come into the Nayanika’s room. But only Chitra came. Wow..

You know the drill

The typical events.. heart breaks, suicides, blame, guilt, and more suicides.

One thing that I do not understand is how both princesses were sneaking that painter inside and outside of the palace. Okay, they were the princess but I doubt that even princess have that kind of freedom.

In that case, King was ready to marry her daughter to a road-side painter, without even meeting him once.

King was ready to break his deal with other King.

What a loser King !! Looking for her daughter’s happiness over the life of lots of people.

Just for the sake of happy ending, returned other guy’s girlfriend too. Silly and childish.

These are the few facts and believe me I ignored loads of them.

Language

Come to the language, I do not know whom to blame. The writer or publishers.

Because it is okay for a writer to make mistakes while writing the book, the editing team of publishing house correct them. I think Notion press does not have any editorial team.

Because every book I have ever read of them is clearly a failure in terms of proofreading and grammar.

In starting I tried to mark all the mistakes but after 5th page, I restricted myself to see plot holes, and then after some time I even stopped doing them with full of my heart.

The End of When Shadows Turn Dark

In the last, I would like to say thanks for sending me When Shadows Turn Dark. I learned a lot from it.

Also, I would like to give a friendly advice to the writer to use beta-reader and editor to cross out the holes and mistakes.

Faults are such a huge turn-off.

Faizan Fahim

Hello, welcome to this blog. Just writing reviews of the book I like. Also, favorite quotes, poetry, memes, sometimes other topics too, but always related to literature. So join me on Twitter to talk to me.

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