Title : A Maverick Heart : Between Love and Life
Author : Ravindra Shukla
Publisher : Frog Books
ISBN : 978-93-82473-00-8
Number of Pages : 383
Price [INR] : 195
Genre: Fiction/Drama

From the Cover Blurb : Resonance – We often use the term, “frequency matching” in our daily life to define compatibility. Our frequency does not match, we do not get along? We are not in sync? We are not on the same page etc.?

When people of similar frequencies (wavelengths or within the same range) come together – output is not a simple sum of individual work, but exponential. In science we term this phenomenon as resonance. Output at this stage is beyond any logical limit.

Three young kids, with different family backgrounds and outlook meet during their graduation days at IIT-Bombay campus and become close friends. Although, individually they are in sync, but the same is not true for their interaction with the world.

How will their relation withstand the conflict of family and society pressure?

How do their characters shape out, as they traverse from an educational environment through the corporate world to the realm of the socio-political world?

Inspired by the real events across the globe from the last decade, Ravindra Shukla brings you the characters based story – struggle and triumphs of a young generation and their relevance in the current socio-eco-political era.

Review : Rahul, Richita and Neerav study together at IIT Bombay. Rahul and Richita became friends and soon fall in love and Neerav is their good friend. In the book, the focus is not on their love story, but on their friendship. The story focuses on how the three friends share a bond in college and then move in different directions and then come back again together. The book also talks about following your heart.

A Maverick Heart, has a slow pace in the beginning which gradually picks up in the second half.

The 383 page saga has a lot of the issues  interwoven in the story viz the problems in the present education system of India, campus life at IIT, conflict between the love of a woman and her respect for parents, the fascination of parents to find NRI grooms for their daughters, Silicon Valley vs Wall Street, American lifestyle, corruption in the government offices, flood relief operations, role of NGOs, social activism, the Right To Information Act etc.

The language is simple. Usually, the dialogues provide enough action to keep a reader engaged but this book has really long conversations between the characters and at many points appear to be big sermons and are sometimes forced and uninspiring too, which makes it pretty disappointing for the reader. And this results in the book being too long and reading it becomes a big arduous task.

Too many chapters, too many details, too many issues makes A Maverick Heart, a book which is badly sewed together. Editing could have been much better and it has a few spelling and grammatical errors too.

Also, the climax does not elicit any real thrill or tension. The book could have been much better.

Rating : 2/5

Linking this post to the Ultimate Blog Challenge and October’s NaBloPoMo.