While reading Sandeep Sharma and Leepi Agarwal's debut work, Hey Dad! Meet My Mom, two films crossed my mind. 'Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind' by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet and 'The Unborn'. The first was a very unusual love story and second, a spooky and not-very-good horror film. HDM3 claims to mix the elements of both and till two-thirds of it, it shows spectacular results but when it tries to disclose its much vaunted secret, it slips spectacularly as well. Too many plot inconsistencies creep in and our unborn/undead child-actor Rishi too starts showing signs of fatigue. Puneet as the horror-stricken SBI manager works but as a photographer-turned-sponsor-within-hours, he disappoints and so do the authors. They just couldn't find the logic to let him settle in the subplot of BIBA fashion week. The subplot carrying Myra, Maya, Puneet's mother and Puneet himself is way too impressive for writers show their potential, unheard and unseen of their age, in spooking us with its horror-elements but as soon as they start leading us to Puneet and Roshni's past lives, they start struggling. The concept of erasing unpleasant memory from your mind is still unproven but that's been used as the focal point of this story. Readers could know when finished with the novel that Rishi was nothing other than the personification of subconscious memory of Roshni, the wife of Puneet who is no longer with him in his current life and Rishi was her unborn son whose birth was terminated by Roshni's mother who could't afford to see Puneet and Roshni together. Why, we don't get to know but we should have been let known about it by the authors. Why would a mother go to such an extent as to poison her daughter so that she gets an untimely abortion? In the last section of the book as well, we find Puneet to be fearful of Roshni's parents and don't seem angry at all at their unpardonable offense. I would consider it a deadly notion. Another thing that was made a huge secret of like it was the end of the world was the story of three children of Roshni. After much deliberation and one truly dull moment of entire book, we are let known that they really are not her children and that they were in fact adopted. This section was stretched to painstaking length and one that absolutely provides nothing of shock value to its readers. The ending of course is legitimate, albeit predictable, for almost everyone knows that in a love triangle, an angle needs to be taken off to make the remaining two work but the authors' language skills has made it very powerful and I feel contented. And as they always say, all well that ends well.
On technical fronts, this book is a winner. From its book cover which is among the very few that does justice to its plot to the editing and proofreading, it represents a standard work that could be used as a benchmark and template for all the upcoming entrants in the market. Let's come to the scoring part now:
a) Achievement - 2/2
b) Language Skills - 2/2; Sublime
c) Plot and Character Development - 2/3
d) Editing and Proofreading - 2/2; Flawless
e) Book Cover, Page Quality and Blurb - 1/1
Total - 9/10
Verdict: If we can discount the minor slip-ups in later phase of plot, HDM3 offers a rich experience in readership. An unputdownable romantic, horrific, suspense thriller!!!!
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