A Fun List of Nevers

With a charming pink, heeled girly cover and an optimistic title, Never Say Never by Anjali Kirpalani is a light, heart-fluttering read which circulates around the lives of Nikita and her best friend/flatmate, Aziza. Nikita is a twenty-five year young woman to whom future seems quite blurry. She has been unemployed for the past few months and is bewildered as to what she is to do next. Wedlock talks by elderly aunties are a big turn off for Nikita, who is still in search of her Prince Charming. In an unromantic and a loveless relationship herself, she secretly harbours a huge crush on Aziza’s boyfriend Raghav, the RJ. Not that her own boyfriend doesn’t love her – he loves her immensely but she is the one who is unable to reciprocate his feelings in a similar fashion. She just thinks that they do not fit in together.

The storyline is whimsical and fun, especially when Nikita makes a humorous resolution that she shall never don velvet! (Her other resolutions like never to marry for money, never to doubt her abilities, never to get completely drunk in public, never to develop feelings for a man she cannot have and never to stay in a relationship with someone she doesn’t love are quite sensible though!) At places the novel gets a little drab and boring; I felt that Nikita’s chase for her one true love gets a little too lengthy and complicated, but the message behind the story is quite evident – life is not a bed of roses; it is very complicated indeed, but despite all obstacles that one has to face, in the end life definitely smiles at you – patience is one of the keys to happiness.

Reviewed by Ananya Dhawan