In Vacant or in Pensive Mood

Set in the 1600s and revolving around the life of a newly-married couple, this book fits aptly into the genre of "Historical Romance". However, the authors do not limit the story to just that, but have added in delightful elements of suspense, drama, action, feminism, and even a pinch of horror! There are highway robberies, betrayals, disguises, deaths, lovemaking and treasure chests in the same story - so you can guess the expansiveness of the plot. The narrative is always in third person, but the perspective switches consistently between that of the two protagonists, the husband and the wife. The reader, most often, is aware of details that the spouses have not shared with one another, and this gives way for some nail-biting, palm-itching impatience. Trapped in the body of one, despite knowing the mind of the other, powerless to do anything but to be lead by the story-teller; there is definitely some delight in being such a reader. The book strikes a beautiful...

I think I like novels better than short stories. Novels begin and end well. They start easy, get thick and difficult around the middle and finally conclude on a note you may or may not agree with. You become the character in the novel, you live and grow, fall in love, get hurt, face difficult situations, survive, or die. When you have read through from cover to cover, you are almost proud of the character you have been, and the life you have lived as the character in the book. If you are not proud of the character, then maybe you didn’t like the book; but that is something else. At the end of the novel, whether you liked it or not, you feel the satisfaction, or the dissatisfaction, of a life lived. Sometimes you feel tired and exhausted from all the action. You are happy, nevertheless, because you know how it ended.  (This is for readers like me who get so involved in the book that when I am forced to take a break from reading, I am almost a zombie. My body is in this world, but...