Dark Romance by Ankit Gusain: a review

Amongst all the ‘darkness’ that surrounds the main two protagonists in the book’s cover, the flowers and skeletons and the love that blossoms is surely a sight to behold. The dark romance, Ankit Gusain’s debut novel is a work of fiction which is based loosely on the beliefs of the villagers about the darkness that surrounds them. I really liked how the book has been presented to the readers but I would’ve liked it more if the cover of the book had resemblances to the village given in the book.

According to the blurb- ‘Dark romance’ is a story of two lovers caught up in the narrow minded attitude of village thinking. Superstition and dark spirits that the villagers’ believe in add their bit in making their life a living hell. The lovers, Priyanka and Ashu, meet clandestinely and their love develops and grows for each other. Things begin to go well for them, but then things take a dark twist… Ashu does everything in his power to get Priyanka, the love of his life, out of this darkness. But her family is out to get his blood… Will Ashu and Priyanka ever be able to get out of the clutches of darkness and the evil that has over shadowed their lives? Will the family and the villagers’ overcome their superstition, their old fashioned village thinking and allow the two lovers to find their happiness? Or will the ‘dark romance’ never find the light of day…

After reading the blurb and seeing the cover of the book, I had expectations from the book. The prologue of the book surely raised my expectations quite a lot. When the story started to present itself to the readers, I could feel myself getting to know the characters a lot but then there was feeling of ‘not-connecting’ too.  The flow of the story was nice and considering the fact that it has been written by a debutant writer, it was really nice. What I liked about the whole book was that, the error count of the book was very low and coming from a debutant, it was really impressive.

When I talk about the characters, I can say that the author has all that he could do to justify the characters. Every character that has been introduced has been given a closure and there weren’t any extra characters. The author has given exactly the needed amount of attention to the characters he has introduced. I really liked the way how the characters were brought into life and then their closures.

Coming to the story, where many people would like to read a hardcore ghost story in the book; most of the book has been filled with normal scenes. The ghost part of the story comes in much late and even though it has its importance, it doesn’t make its presence felt much. It is done very lightly that might be a big disappointment to the readers who were waiting for a proper ghost story. I would’ve preferred it more if the ghost part or rather the dark part of the story would’ve given more highlight throughout the story. The ending to the book was kind of expected but maybe the readers would’ve liked it a bit more if a bit of twist would’ve been given to the end. Apart from all that, the book is a nice one time read and I would like to rate it a 3.25 out of 5.