Be My Perfect Ending Review: A Regular Romantic Affair
A lot of people judge a book by its cover. But I don’t (lies!!). I judge a book by the main characters’ name. Well, I did at least for this book. I picked ‘Be My Perfect Ending’ because the lead characters’ name is ‘Armaan’ and I love that name. I love that name because Dr. Armaan Mallick from the Hindi show, ‘Dill Mill Gaye’ was my favourite TV hero. The role was played by actor Karan Singh Grover who was the best-looking doctor on this planet. So yes, the name instantly melted my heart and I knew I want to read this book. Apart from that, another thing that caught my attention was the fact that Armaan is a television writer. If you have been following my blog you would know that I used to review first episodes of newly launched Indian TV serials but I gave that up because I lost faith in our TV serials. Hardly any show offered quality content and I decided to stick to other Asian dramas instead. So, when I read that Armaan is a TV writer, I wanted to get an insight into his life. I wanted to know what makes TV writers create such regressive content. Not that I don’t know the actual reason but I wanted to have first-hand information. But sadly, the book is not about that. Which is absolutely fine with me because the central theme of the book is romance and the book justifiably concentrates on Armaan and Sara’s love story. I finished this love story in one sitting and below is what I felt about it.
Be My Perfect Ending by Arpit Vageria
Publisher: Srishti Publishers & Distributors
Not every story has a happy ending, but is a perfect ending all that matters?
Armaan is a young television writer and seems to have it all – a dream job, ample money and a good place to live in Mumbai. Despite all that, his heart lies somewhere in his hometown Indore.
Merry and beaming through all of life’s ups and downs, Sara is a little desolate and now needs a different space to rethink her life as she joins a leading television channel in Mumbai.
Armaan and Sara meet in FILMY style and quite obviously then, cannot help but fall in love. The passionate new romance in his life throws everything else aside, but little does he know that there’s a storm headed their way.
Walking together, they stumble upon long-buried truths, shocking new twists and tough decisions.
Be My Perfect Ending is a story of love that knows no bounds, of endings that are far from ordinary and new beginnings that hold a promise of LOVE.
(Description as on Goodreads.com)
I LIKE Be My Perfect Ending Because,
…it does not have regular romance novel clichés. Armaan does not ‘save’ Sara when she is in any trouble. She handles her own problems and he handles his. Romance is not over-the-top with him doing romantic stuff that guys do not really do for their lady love. Armaan is romantic but not overly emotional. He has his ways of showing his love and he does that ample number of times in the story.
…the writing is simple and smooth. It is a regular love story without any major plot-twist. I finished this book in three hours including several breaks.
…Armaan hits the nail on the head with his reply to his landlord. In the book, Armaan’s landlord mocks his profession saying that he hates watching TV because of the poor content in serials. Armaan snaps that, ‘…We write shit because the audience expects shit from us, it’s time for you guys to get matured. The day you guys do that, you’d see India producing the best of television content, which might still be out if some people’s league to even understand.’ This is so damn true. It hurts to even read it. Indian TV industry works on TRP’s and any kind of output you get matches exactly the kind of demand in the market. I have ranted against this trend in so many of my posts that I do not wish to delve any deeper. But yes, the writer is absolutely right there. Do not hate the player, hate the game.
…the sheer contempt with which Nisha is described in the book makes me sure that she is a real character. In the book, Nisha is a typical intern sucking up to her boss to survive in the business. She spares no opportunity to demean Armaan only to please her boss. The way the narrator explains her character and Armaan’s’ feelings for her is simply hilarious. I could almost see Nisha before my eyes because Armaans’ hatred for her was palpable.
I Do NOT Like Be My Perfect Ending Because,
…I was confused with who the narrator was. At first, it seemed like a first-person narration as it felt like Armaan was narrating the story. But somewhere in the middle of the book, I realised that it is actually a third person narration focusing majorly on Armaan and occasionally on Sara. But then why was the narrator being so philosophical? The narrator would constantly speak about life, love, hope, regret and every other topic you can think of. The narrator even justified twice that Armaan had ‘nothing against homosexuals’. Actually the way the story was being narrated it would have made more sense if it was narrated by Armaan because that is what I believe it actually was. At least that way all the philosophy would make some sense.
…it was toooooo philosophical for me. The writer adds random thoughts after almost every scene which makes the book a lecture on philosophy. The book could have easily done without the extra ‘gyaan’. At one point it felt like the writer wrote the story only to be able to record his late night random musings in a book.
…characters in the story lack depth. They were all one dimensional and half-baked. Of all the characters in the story, I was most disappointed by Sara as I felt she could have been a much better heroine than she was. I think she was an ‘orphan’ in the book only so she could live-in with Armaan without any ‘family issues’. She has no backstory of how she grew up and reached her position at work or how she met her ex-boyfriend or how she became such a confident modern woman. There is no meat on her. How am I supposed to believe her character? She is more like a puppet dancing to the writer’s tune without any character motivation. I don’t know why, but to me, the book felt a lot like an episode in a romantic TV series. No backstory, no character development just plain love affair.
…certain points explained in the story were too hard to digest. For instance, Armaan feels proud about achieving a lot in a very short time. He even says that he has become a household name and people who know him either respect him or envy him. Now, Armaan is a TV writer. I personally have been watching Indian TV shows all my life. I have devotedly followed several TV popular serials but till date, of all the shows I have seen, I do not know the name of a single writer behind these shows. I am not saying that writers cannot be famous but an Indian TV writer becoming a ‘household name’ is difficult to believe. That is because most of the time there is more than one writer involved in TV scripting and writers of a show even change quite often. Also, Armaan does not elaborate his ‘big achievements’ in the book for me to believe him. It is sad but true that writers in our country do not receive the credit they truly deserve. Though Armaan being ‘famous’ is difficult to buy, I still hope his words come true and writers in our country start receiving more acknowledgement than they have been getting.
Final View: Be My Perfect Ending is a very light romantic read. The writing is simple and easy to understand. If you like regular Indian romances then you might like this one.
**This book is a review copy but the opinion in this post is unbiased and 108% my own.
You can check out Amazon.in for a discount on this book.
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