THE BOOK STARTS off with what appears to be a Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap fusion. The protagonist is trying to woo his long-lost childhood sweetheart with antics such as several missed calls from an unknown number and sending large and innumerable bouquets to the workplace.

A childhood/ adolescent romance set in a coastal Orissa is interrupted by the Paradip cyclone. The author is able to bring forth not only the material destruction but the emotional scarring left on people who had to deal with the natural calamity. The 1999 Paradip cyclone caught the east coast with gaps in our nation's disaster preparation or relief plans and their implementation.

The story manages to bring forth various characters and builds on various relationships of rivalry, jealousy, some political plotting and like most Karan Johar movies, an ever reliable friend. The author does make an attempt to build the characters in book but either leaves them midway, or deems it unnecessary. The story would have been a lot more enjoyable if the peripheral characters added more bite to things until the plot thickens. These bits are scattered through the first few chapters of the book but kept me wanting more.

The last part of the book takes the reader to where the hero acts on his resolve to finally bring all his teenage yearnings to fruition. He picks up another creepy modus operandi to propose marriage to the girl. Following this the plots unravels the heroine's past where she has had to live the life of Mother India in the 21st century.

The story comes full circle where both our protagonists coming together with a catchy line of “Never away, Never apart”. The book is certainly recommended for the hopeless romantics and the ones whose faith in love has not been stolen by the overload of bubblegum romance so rampant in the 1990s.