Roses are Blood Red Book Review

Book:- Roses Are Blood Red

Author:- Navoneel Chakraborty

Genre:- Fiction

Publication:- Penguin Random House

Publication date:- December 2019

Review by: - Mahima Shreshtha

Roses are blood red is a thriller romantic tragic love story. The story will bind you till the end as with each revelation eagerness to know the truth increases.

Summary:- Aarisha Shergill, a girl from a small town uphills, works in her father's cafe and has the most loving and caring boyfriend, Vanav Thakur, even her parents know about him. Vanav called himself as Aarisha's jogi(devotee). Life is all good until some incidents in her life made her doubt her boyfriend. Many of the incidents she could not remember but are still written in her diary made her all fiddled and compelled her to find out what's the truth. Read Arisha's journey from complete falsehood to truth.

Plot:- The story starts where a girl, Aarisha Shergill is on her way to meet her boyfriend. She always asked her boyfriend to make love to her but he always said "not so quick Ranisa".He used to call her Ranisa(queen), she liked it so much. They were talking about how she feels insecure when he leaves her and go away and he was consoling her that his love for her is not fadable. Its was a romantic night. It felt like a reverie. Suddenly out of nowhere there was a thud on her head ,the boy who was with her made her unconscious, tore her clothes off, created a scene of rape, but he didn't raped her. Then he extracted a vial of semen and scattered it over her. As he was a doctor, so he made sure that no-one traces that semen. Then he called the police and informed them about it. After doing all these he shouted "I don't let go". That man was Vanav Thakur, and it was obvious that he was so much obsessed with Aarisha that he crossed all the lines.

Then the book talks about Binny Bagga, a housewife living in Delhi, karol bagh, shouting on her husband, her daughter and her widow mother-in-law too. It was a mixed feeling for her as her best-friend-cum-first-love, Vanav Thakur was coming over lunch. As he came, they talked about everything. When Binny asked her about getting married he told her that he is in relationship with Aarisha Shergill. Binny always knew that if it was not for her, If she didn't came in their life, Binny would be married to Vanav by now. Binny always knew if not a miracle, Vanav could never win Aarisha.

There is one more girl, Samiha. A drug addict and a broken heart. Vanav and Samiha have decided that they will heal eachother and they fullfill eachothers sexual needs. Samiha knows all his secrets. Later on Samiha also fell in love with Vanav, her captain, but he didn't.

Everything with Aarisha was under Vanav's control until once she went with her friend to meet her boyfriend and his friend. They got drunk there and his friend tried to kiss her. Aarisha was really embarrassed about it as she had not told Vanav about meeting them. But Vanav didn't reacted the way she had thought he would. That made her a little vaccinated. Later on she decided to persue for management course and leave her hometown Tosh. She cracked CAT and secured a seat in management institute in Udaipur, the only place from where Vanav wanted to keep her away. He had thought that by forcing the bad incident in her life she would be totally dependent on him. But now she wanted to explore, and Vanav could not do anything about it as he had never stopped her from anything. Later she had a doubt that Vanav has lied to her about his parents too. For cross-checking she went to his house. But Vanav had everything planned. But her wariness keeps increasing as she couldn't remember any of the incidents of their lovemaking which was mentioned in her diary. There were many more things mentioned in the diary that seemed to never happened. She also became suspicious about her own parents after she paid surprise visits to her home and found no one there, but her parents lied about their presence. Later she found out that the medecine that Vanav was giving her to improve her memory was actually a medicine of memory loss.  

In serch of the truth she again visited Vanav's parents house, this time without telling him. There she founded that his parents were alive. And she encountered Binny there. Binny was surprised to know that she was Arisha. She was not the Aarisha Shergill Vanav felt in love with. During a chit chat Binny got to know that she has a blood group same as Vanav. All these things made Aarisha fall apart. She doesn't know her own identity anymore. Who is she? Who is the Aarisha Shergill  Vanav felt in love with? Why Vanav was pretending all the time that he loved her? 

Character:-

VANAV THAKUR, all the lives in the story revolves around him. He was an intelegent brain but hapless. He always remained famished for love. He destroyed a lot of lives just because he could not subdue his feelings. 

AARISHA SHERGILL, was a mysterious character so I'm not gonna talk alot about her because that would be a spoiler.

BINNY BAGGA, Vanav's childhood friend, who was in love with Vanav since beginning. But she gave up as Vanav didn't love her. 

SAMIHA, A drug addict, broken heart. She was Vanav's so called wife though they never got married. She and Vanav was together only for their sexual satisfaction. But eventually, she felt in love with him. 

Conclusion:- Love can be elixir and poisonous. At times all we can do is, sit and watch love destroying us.

Loving someone doesn't mean you got to have them. Sometimes the best way to love someone is to let them go. Many life would have been saved if only Vanav understood this. His obsession for Aarisha not only destroyed his life, but many other lifes too. Vanav is a psychopath lover who thinks loving someone means you own them.

It's sad how so many girl fell in love with such a brutal minded person. He killed so many people. He killed two men by bursting a gas cylinder when he was only in 11th std. Somehow he was thinking that all those were for his love but actually he was doing all these for himself. 

He destroyed Aarisha's life for his shake. He was a genuine person but his obsession made him loose everything. He was a brilliant mind since childhood. He cracked medicine in just one attempt. Some of things he quoted really impressed me. One of those are "When people are meant to be together, however far apart they are when they’re born, their journey towards each other appears before they appear before the other. It’s pure magic that makes two apparent strangers meet and realize that they belonged together, forever." 

He was a man of a perception but with time he went on committing crime, from cutting fingers to drowning people and burning Aarisha's friends. At the end he was just a crazy psychopath lover.