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Resemblance - The Journey of a Doppelganger (Book Review)


Resemblance - The Journey of a DoppelgangerResemblance - The Journey of a Doppelganger by Arti Honrao
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The story kept hinting of having some connection with Mumbai, India. Even though there isn't a mention of it, some part of me was adamant that this had to do something with Mumbai. When I turned to the last page and read about the author, Arti Honrao, I said- 'Bingo!!'. So she is a Mumbaikar afterall.

Maybe it was just intuition or plain co-incidence that a Mumbaikar recognized another by her written work but then the story itself manages to create a framework through things like- a 'connect' between a mother and child, a future prediction specialist, a grand plan, destiny and the like.

The book traces the journey of Sneha from falling in love (at first sight), becoming her love interest's wife's doppelganger and ultimately freeing herself from that in a way she would never have imagined as possible.One usually tends to fall in love with the one reflected in the mirror but what if that very face becomes a cause of doubt about the love somebody has towards you?

It is an easy read but the emotions undergone by the characters are chaotic and the reader tends to turn pages quickly in order to reduce those chaos that take form in the mind.

I felt that the story was 'well-executed' rather than 'well-knit' which was a dampener at times.Moreover, the use of names Sneha, Smriti,Shreya got confusing when used repeatedly but I had become so alert about registering and assigning the right names to the right characters that I actually corrected an error in name(Pg 344).

I also felt that the book could have been edited with a more sharp eye as some missing punctuation marks in a few places were distracting ( I am not much of a grammar Nazi as I myself am bound to make mistakes but the ones I mentioned were the ones I noticed, so I thought I would let the author know as I believe that it is important to get your baby away from mistakes).

I liked the cover design by Hema Saramma Varghese and I would like to congratulate her for the beautiful cover.

The author is of the opinion that -
'Being good at writing a story is not about the story being unpredictable, it is about the way you narrate the predictable story and still keep the reader interested.'

I appreciate it. :)



-Divya Nambiar

Author: Arti Honrao
Other books by the author: My Life-story (Fiction) by Arti Honrao, Is This Love & Autumn - The Last Leaf by Arti Honrao


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