Book Review: Voice Mates by Anamika Mishra

I got this book – Voice Mates for review. Since I was no real fan of reality shows, I predicted I might have to read this book in small parts over few weekends and thus informed that I might need 2-3 weekends for review. But once I got the book and started reading, finished it in 24 hours.

This post is a short review of the book.
I have read many campus love stories, office fictions, thrillers etc but had never read a fiction focused fully on reality show and singing. Voice Mates is one such book.

Voice Mates, as the title suggests, is about music. The blurb on the back cover gives quick intro to the lead pairs – a rich girl and a poor boy who team up to contest most reputed music reality show. Reading the book takes you through a journey of reality show auditions, various selection rounds etc.  And of course, some romance thrown in. There is lots of diversity in the two lead characters, still fate brings them together and takes them through the reality show process. Read the book to find out challenges they face and ultimate results.

I liked the strong message communicated by Sam somewhere in the middle of the book: Parents are not bad people. If you thought they don’t like you or they are restricting you or not letting you have your choices, it is most probably due to lack of proper communication/interaction between family members. Talking can resolve lots of conflicts/misunderstandings.

Voice Mates reminded me of the musical movie I had seen during my college days- Lucky Ali starrer ‘Sur’. It also reminded me of Avril Lavigne's Sk8ter Boi video which I had seen long back. Author's knowledge of English songs is evident in the book.

Voice Mates is Anamika's second book. I just ordered her previous book- Too hard to handle- was available for Rs 173 with some new seller on flipkart as against MRP of Rs 250.

But if I have to highlight a few drawbacks/limitations of VoiceMates' plot, here’re few.

1. Because the back cover talks about Sam and Tulip and their dreams and first 50 pages do not focus on any character other than these two, there was no suspense like who will win the show. If there were few other characters developed in parallel-those who give serious competition to lead pair, readers would have probably had more suspense.
2. No mention of SMS voting which are core to all reality shows.
3. I felt 5 hour bus journey to resort little odd- Goa is a small state and you can cross to neighboring states in 4-5 hours. But anyway, no big deal.
4. Didn’t get proper closure as to what happened to Seema, but we can assume they got eliminated I guess.

Summary:
Title: Voice Mates
Author: Anamika Mishra
Publisher: Jaico
Genre: Fiction/Romance
MRP: Rs 250
No of pages: 202

If you like music, reality shows etc then this book makes great buy. Even otherwise, Voicemates is a nice entertainer.

Cover image taken from Author's website. Other books I have reviewed earlier: Bestseller she wrote * Never Mind Yaar * I don't wear sunscreen * Love is Vodka *