Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki {Book Review}

Good morning!

Time for a Sunday catch up and a new book review.

The only reason I purchased this book was because the title just stood out to me. Okay, the cover is also pretty.

I was intrigued about why a book would be called Bitter Sweets and the meaning behind it. The blurb was also interesting and held many promises too, with possible reveals to the meaning of the title, and let me form my own perceptions as well.

DISCLAIMER: This review could contain possible spoilers based on my opinions. All opinions and views are my own.

Book review: Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki #bookreview
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Plot:

Shona Karim knows she is destined to be with Parvez when they meet at a young age. She knows their families won’t approve of their love, so they decide to elope years later and start their new lives living above a sweet shop in South London.

Shona’s father’s life isn’t one of honesty, and soon Shona follows the same path, leading a double life and harbouring secrets that could be devastating to her life. As years go by, Shona finds how destructive lies and deception are; not just to her, but to everyone in her life. When an event takes her life off course, she realises her dark secrets are on the brink of exposure. Only she isn’t prepared for the lies of others that start to open up too.

Can a family overcome the cloud of deception that hangs over everyone?

My Opinion: Positive Thoughts

I found this book to be an easy read, with no complicated language, except a few translations here and there to bring context to text. The novel kicked off with an interesting backstory which set a plot line immediately for the rest of the book, and explained a lot of the events that were to follow as the story unfolded.

My Opinion: Negative Thoughts

While Shona was the main character in the book, the author told the story of many characters throughout the book, and switched between their views too often that I couldn’t keep up and remember the previous chapter from the next of certain characters.

Although all the characters stories are linked together in one twisted deception, there’s hardly any interaction between these characters in the book. Everyone seems to be going off in their own direction. I mean, everyone.

Overview:

The drama did keep me in suspense, and made me want to keep reading, but at some stage, it just became too much. The book felt more of a setting of a soap drama, and would probably do well as one, but as a book, it was painful. The author tried too much to add drama and crossed the line of when enough would have been enough.

The book summed up: a reality story line with a fairytale ending. Anti-climatic.

My Rating:

The book has a rating of 3.54 on GoodReads. I gave it a 3. While the book focuses on realities of how some lives are lived, the ending was very against what the actual realities are when there are consequences for certain actions. After ALL the drama that unfolded, a happy ending for everyone was extremely unlikely.

I feel that the author just didn’t want to deal with the consequences of reality.