She Stood by Me by Tarun Vikash
Love is not a relationship
Most of us have experienced first love, first heartbreak, that we occasionally remember, and this novel She Stood by Me by Tarun Vikash, is a reminder of those memories. Like the subtitle implies love is much more than a friendship. This romantic fiction is about a love story that begins in teenage years and grows with the age of protagonist.
Aparna and Abhi who starts their relationship as friends with a one-sided crush, and then their friendship is transformed in time into a lovely story of love. Their friends Manish and Nidhi also have their own love story, and they are an integral part of the life of Aparna and Abhi. Abhi who comes from a lower — middle — class family, he has responsibilities waiting for him in the future, he is career-oriented, but he believes in romance and first love concept. On the other side, Aparna comes from an upper — middle — class family with an urge to prove the world about her existence. She is career-oriented but somehow she doesn’t believe in love, in a better way to say that she doesn’t have time for love. This Love story ought to be difficult as one person is madly in love and another person is aloof with love as a feeling and living in denial. Their love story has many obstacles like studying in different cities, job pressure, and then family drama. In small cities Love and then Love marriage is still considered as a taboo.
Most of us have experienced first love, first heartbreak, that we occasionally remember, and this novel She Stood by Me by Tarun Vikash, is a reminder of those memories. Like the subtitle implies love is much more than a friendship. This romantic fiction is about a love story that begins in teenage years and grows with the age of the protagonist.
Author Tarun has very aptly defined the feelings of love, responsibility towards the family that are so contrasting to each other. Though this book She Stood by Me is his debut novel, he did quite a remarkable job with the characters and the story.
Every character in this book has been nicely thought of and then put on paper. The character I most connected to was Manish, as he reminded me of Bollywood movies that had one best friend who made fun of the Hero, pulled his leg, but then he also stood with him in every thick and thin of the situation.
Unfortunately, my problem was that most of the novel was like reading Abhi’s private unrealistically goody – goody diary with individual dialects and dialogues, which became quite uncomfortable instead of smooth flowing reading, which I am used to. Somehow the story seemed little stretched with too much detailing of unwarranted information which could have been omitted.
I would like to rate this YA romantic fiction novel 3.7 out 5. It is one time read that is quite entertaining in its own way. This book will remind you about your first crush, first love and your life before 25 hit you.