My Love Never Faked by Nikhil Mahajan

My Love Never Faked - Trust Me I Still Love You is a different yet similar love story.

Here is something I really like about the book and I feel it differentiated it from the rest of the books of this type - the story. Its not your regular boy-meets-girl, and stuff happens book, and for the first time in a long time its the story of two people who have actually been in a relationship for a long, long time, and a story of how the stupid action of the guy (namely "meeting a girl on a website, flirting with her, and finally ending up with a tattoo of her name on his chest") breaks them up - and how love may or may not survive when faced with insurmountable odds. It gives you a very "it-could-happen-to-you-if-you-are-really-stupid" situation and then forces you to question what the hell you would do in it. If you were the girl, would you forgive him? If you were the guy, would you dare to ask for forgiveness? And will Priya finally forgive Abhi? Written in a very autobiographical way (and perhaps based on real events, I don't know if it is) it forces you to look up because of the realism. 

The realism is also there in the characters and situations. Contrary to bollywood-ish dramas, there is not much photoshopping done to this story. It comes across as one that might happen to just about anyone. Abhi acts really awfully in the whole story - two-timing, forgetting important dates, watching porn, having immature pranks with friends, fantasizing about girls, and of course making the mistake of his life as shown above, and Priya comes across as the typified girlfriend - nagging, fighting, cute, always remembering the important dates...and while this does seem a little stereotyped at times, with there typical roles of the girlfriend and boyfriend, and patronizing at times where Abhi talks about "makhan lagana" to Priya, it does strike a chord at places, and will for many people living in our day and age who are happily (or unhappily) in love.

The problems I've had with this book include the grammar and writing style, which did not agree with me at all. I understand this is a book aimed for the 'texting crowd' but I do not find things like 'u' acceptable in the narrative of a book, and I do feel the grammar and formatting could do with major editing in the book. If you arent a grammar Nazi like me you will mostly not have a problem with this, but me being who I am could not easily get over this. (Note: The author has informed me that this is corrected in later versions of the book. So a note for people buying, consider looking into this.) And on the other hand, the book is short and zippy, it gets through pretty fast, and there are very few slow scenes, though there are a few irrelevant ones, like the one with the revenge, which seemed to be there just because. 

Final thoughts: I can recommended the book for its sense of realism and a plot that I found pretty different. Points off for the handling of the grammar and syntax.

Other thoughts: I'll have author Nikhil Mahajan for an interview soon on this blog, watch this space! Also, this is one of my additions for the Book Reading Challenge 2011. 

(Financial disclosure: Book source was the author.)