Since last few months, I keep getting these sponsored posts on Facebook about apps where you can read free books by budding authors. They always have catchy one or two sentences which are supposed to be like the summary (usually it's not a summary and just some sentences to get readers intrigued) followed by an extract, say the first few chapters etc. I often get myself reading these extracts just to pass time. More often than not they are pathetic translations of Chinese or South East Asian novels by some unknown budding authors which more often than not harbour on similar plots - A beautiful young girl unwillingly gets married to an extremely handsome, rich entrepreneur (or sometimes even a prince) with a bad reputation and how she manages to win over him and make the marriage work. There is always a vamp typical 70s-80s Bollywood movie or Ekta Kapoor's soaps style who is vile, vicious and totally 'un-sanskari' whereas the heroine is totally opposite. I hardly get any motivation to read the full extracts, leave alone try to get the app or go to the web and look for the whole book. There have been times when I have done that. "Escorting the Billionaire by Leigh James" was one such book for me, in fact, the first one where I actually made the effort. To say that it was borderline porn and quite disappointing is an understatement, because I am the kind of person who has never even had a Mills and Boons phase in my teenage. Thereafter, I had been vary of reading full books from these extracts. I did try twice. The second book that I tried turned into a full blown porn novel after few pages and I left it in between. Mind you, it's not in my nature to leave books in between no matter how boring, cringing or dragging they are. I would have long phases of no reading time but I would usually not pick up another book before I finish a book. So, it was quite a tussle inside me whether I should read through whole of it or just leave it there but eventually I told myself that I have much better things to do. Then after few weeks I went all the way with another book and started reading it online. It was some bad translation of a Chinese Novel and felt a bit interesting at the beginning. After reading about 170 Chapters (to be fair they were not very big Chapters), I realised that the story is practically going around in circles where the end is predictable but the author is deliberately delaying it by introducing new characters and replaying the same story line with the lead protagonists. Just trying to check how many more chapters there were to go, I found that the book had about 2000 chapters. Whoa! My inclination died then and there and I left it.
Now, "Married to the Devil's Son" was yet another a free novel type that I stumbled upon on Facebook. The story was not much my type as it had Demons and Witches and I never kind of liked these fantasy books unless it was the Harry Potter series which was to the point when it came to making it realistically possible writing. But, I guess I was in the phase where I was neck down in work, typically exhausted by day end, and was looking for a very light, no brainer kind of read. This book somehow fitted the bill. So, I went ahead and looked for a full version online. I found it quite easily and, in fact, this book even had some reviews on Goodread.
I eventually read the full book and even picked up the sequel since the first book was left at a somewhat intriguing point. Apparently, there are one or two more books in the series but I don't plan reading them. The story is okay; it's light, frothy and romantic. There is not too much character building except for describing physical appearances of the characters (and guess what they are all very good looking and exquisite, both men and women). Also, the language is not very refined, there are many grammatical and spelling errors. I think the author, Jasmine Josef, can do with an editor here. But other than that, it was a total timepass and I have no issues documenting these books here as my 6th and 7th books of the year, as part of my 12 books target for the year.
#DevilsSonSeries
#JasmineJosef
#12BooksToRead2021
#recentread
#justfinished
