Book review 003: You Only Live Once: One for Passion Two for Love Three for Friendship by Stuti Changle.

Book Description:

 Imagine you disappear.

Twenty years later, three people are looking for you.

One is dying to meet you again.

The other wishes you had never met them.
The third wishes to have met you at least once.

You are one person. Aren’t you? But you are not the same for each one of them.

Find answers about your own life in this inspiring story reflective of the youth in India. You will join a broken but rising YouTube star Alara, a struggling but hopeful stand-up comedian Aarav, and a psycho but zen beach-shack owner Ricky. Together, take the journey to seek the truth behind the famous singer Elisha’s disappearance somewhere by the deep sea in Goa.

Will you be able to find Elisha? Or will you end up finding yourself?

     

About the author:

Stuti Changle is the popular author of the much-loved book On The Open Road — Three Lives. Five Cities. One Startup is on a mission to inspire the youth to pursue their dreams with courage. Her book rose to Amazon Bestseller charts in a month of its release and won Notable Mentions in Amazon Kindle’s Pen to Publish competition.

A post-graduate in management from the prestigious B-school IMI, New Delhi and a graduate in Computer Science and Technology, Stuti has worked with corporates like HSBC and Coffee Day Beverages before testing the entrepreneurial waters.

My Review:

The story is set in Palolem, Goa, where Alara flies down in search of her mother who ran away when Alara was a little girl. Alara is a beautiful singer, living in Prague, the Czech Republic She mostly composes her own songs and has lots of fans around the world. She is ravenous for her mother’s love and feels incomplete without her and somehow this thing made her hate him more than anything else. Despite the rumours that her mother, Elisha, who is also a famous Goan singer, is dead, Alara keeps faith in her and continues her search for her mother.

Then there is Aarav, who is a final year engineering student at GIMT and is currently doing a summer internship at HSBC bank. He wants to be a stand-up comedian, but knowing very well about the financial condition of his family and the education loan which his parents had taken for his study, he keeps himself stuck to the profession he is currently in. He visits Palolem beach on weekends to rejuvenate himself and practice his passion for stand-up comedy at Ricky’s shack. Now here comes the third protagonist of the story, Ricky. He is retired army personnel who used to play the drums with the singer Elisha at the Hippie Trails Cafe in Goa. Elisha and Ricky are childhood friends and Ricky loves Elisha a lot, even to date he is a bachelor and lives with the memories of Elisha. The lives of all three get connected as the story proceeds and take its turns.

Beauty that spreads through the mind and lingers there in alterations so deep they’re almost physical: This is what I love most about Stuti’s work. Stuti is a gorgeous writer of lines and dialogue and paragraphs, all the virtuosity in the marks upon the page, but even more deeply—and much more interestingly—she is an artist of the unsaid.

The love between Alara & Aarav is so sweet in that you will experience innocent (or not) romance and pure feelings. Halfway through Stuti Changle’s new novel, I found I was smiling until tears ran down my cheeks.

An honest representation of characters is one thing that made me hooked on the book. The title is intriguing and the cover is warm and cosy along with eye-catching. The narration is compassionate and smooth, coupled with easy language.

I love this book from beginning to end. I would highly recommend everyone to read this novel, despite your age group, as you won’t be able to put the book down. For me, this one is definitely not a one-time read and I am surely going to read this book again as it has those good vibes and the capacity to lift anyone’s mood.

                                                                                                                                           

My Rating: 4.5/5

Buy this book on Amazon: YOLO