I have never read a book, finished it, and immediately picked it up to read again.
I did today.
Except this isn’t actually a book. It’s an audio-play – but it’s on Audible, so I’m counting it. And it’s only an hour and a half. So, I guess I didn’t put the book down. I finished it, than immediately re-started it.
Occasionally, you come across a story that pushes all your buttons in just the right way, and gives you everything you are looking for – even if you didn’t even know that you were before reading it. Evil Eye was like that, for me. It was the absolutely perfect little story for me, today.
(It probably helps that my wife and I have been watching a lot of true crime shows, and I’ve been listening to a lot of the Case File podcast).
There really isn’t much to say about this that doesn’t give the whole thing away, but the question at the heart of the book is whether or not a person can escape their karmic fate. The entire book is told via phone calls, mostly between the main character (Pallavi) and her mother (Usha) who lives in Delhi. The mother-daughter relationship feels very real, to me. Usha is trying to arrange a marriage for Pallavi, who’s in her late-20s – but Pallavi is an independent American woman and isn’t really interested in Indian men. The characters were incredibly charming, and the dynamic between them felt warm and familiar.
One day, Pallavi meets a man (Sundeep), and expects her mother to be thrilled. Only she isn’t. What follows is a back-and-forth between the two (and Pallavi’s father gets pulled in) that ratchets up the tension, building to a thrilling climax.
I absolutely loved this book, and want nothing more (right now) than to read something else of Madhuri Shekar. But it doesn’t look like she has anything else. I recommend it to everyone – and it’s free if you’re an Audible member.
This appears to have an Amazon Prime adaptation – but it has a pretty bad IMDb rating. I think I’ll pass.