While My Pretty One Sleeps: Marry Higgins Clark (book review)

I've read a few other books by Marry Higgins Clark before this, so I dug into this book as soon as I laid my hands on it. The book was published in 1989 and was number 10 in publisher's weekly best selling book that year. 

The gist of the story is that Neeve Kearney, owner of a successful and exclusive fashion boutique and ex-police commissioner's daughter gets herself into an ultimate nightmare when she starts investigating the mysterious disappearance of her most regular customer Ethel Lambston. Ethel is a writer and best selling author of her book of juicy exposure. 

Ethel is found dead, much to the dismay of Ethel's ex-husband, greedy nephew and a fashion mougul who are suspected for the crime. Now as an innocent witness in this case Neeve is drawn into a new nightmare of sinster labyrinth of greed and ambition that leads her to mortal danger.

The story is told in third person perspective which includes perspectives from many characters in the book.             The story is very interesting and holds your attention. Though the story is a thriller there's so much about fashion in it. There's a description of what one or the other character is wearing in every two pages. If you are a fashion freak and also love mystery then this book is for you, it has a good combination of mystery and fashion. The story revolves around the mysterious death of a writer but the author manages to connect this death with various other situations and stories involving Neeve Kearney and her mother's mysterious death when Neeve was ten, in a really interesting way.

The characters in the story have powerfull personalities, the main character Neeve Kearney is protrayed as a intuitive, classy and friendly daughter of an ex police commissioner, who has a the best sense of  fashion just like her mother.                

The mystery of the murder remains unsolved even to the readers till the very end and takes a really unexpected, interesting twist. It is really difficult even for the readers to even guess who is the murderer until the end.

The initial part of the story, in my opinion is a bit dragged, as it's difficult to understand where or what it is leading too but that's​ only for a little while. Later is it gets difficult to reel yourself off the book until you know what happens. 

I badly wanted to include a image of the book here but I don't why blogger is not allowing me to do so :-(

If I could travel back in time.........

Everyone would want to go back in time and change things. Even though we know it's utterly impossible, we still have that flicker of hope that never dies. It comes back to life when you watch time travel related movies or you watch Doremon regularly (maybe that's just me). Everytime I watch something like that my imagination goes into all bizzare things from saving India while independence struggle to telling myself not to buy that overpriced dress that I wouldn't like after getting it home. So this time I let my imagination run wild, when I was watching a program on YouTube where they asked 'what would be the one thing or situation that you would like to change if you could go back in time.' I'll tell what I would do.
If I had that chance I would go three years back in time, to my first year in college, to that day, specially that one minute, when I had made the dumbest mistake in my life.
I had a huge crush on this guy for the past one or two year, from when I had seen him from the first time in school. We fortunately made it to the same college, in fact same class. He would have atleast been my friend (if not boyfriend) now, had I done the right thing. We had a class free (the teacher was sick or something) and like I said in the previous post I read a lot, half of the class was out in the corridor chattering away and I was leaning against a shady pillar reading 'Only time will tell ' by Jeffery Archer, it was the first book from the Clifton Chronicles series and I was nearing last the few pages, I just wanted to finish it in that one hour so that I can start with the second book in the series as soon as I reach home. Now this guy on whom I had a crush and a few of his friends moved near the pillar to get some shade from the glaring sun and this guy happened to see me reading.
He came to talk to me and asked me,
'hey what? You are reading even now, so seriously?' And I don't know what was wrong with me at time because all I did was to look up from my book and reply saying, 'it's a novel' and I'd shrugged.
After that he looked at me for a second, nodded and went back to his friends.
He must have thought I was retarded or something, what kind of a response was that. It's still embarrassing to myself.
I could have milked that​ moment, I could have told him something like 'it's a novel by my favourite author, and it's really interesting." (I think it still sounds​ lame) after that maybe I could have asked him if he read, who was his favourite author so on.
After that day he didn't give a damn about me, even in the second year when on some event, everyone were taking pictures as it was last year in that college, I had forced him to get a picture with me (don't ask me how) he just smiled, stood next to me and as soon the picture was taken, he was off. I know it's embarrassing.

So if I had a chance to go back in time, I would like change what happened on that fateful day. That's it from me now, comment if anyone of you would like a chance to travel back in time.

Everything Happens​ for a Reasons.

I was watching On Air with AIB where they were talking about their first jobs and how they ended up being where ever they are now. At some point they started connecting dots from their past and I thought why don't I do the same. The first question that came to my mind was how did I start writing? Many people ask me what inspired me to write and most of the time I'm clueless at what to say. So I thought why not rewind a little to when I first thought of writing. In retrospect​ what inspired me to write was reading books, I used to read comics and fairy tales and other books in my childhood. Even in my high-school I used to somehow manage to get some odd book to read so my friend lent me three (3 or 5 I don't remember properly) books that she had won in some competion. We were 4 friends including me.
So the first proper novel I read was Robinson Crusoe and I loved it for I even fantasized about living alone on an isolated island, that was when I was in 9th standard after that I read Uncle Tom's Cabin and then Julius Caesar.
Then in my 10th standard there was some kind of books exhibition held by my school. I fought with my parents to give me money so that I can buy some books. I bought two books in that exhibition. My another friend this time forced me to buy a book that gave the inspiration to start writing, it was a book by Chetan Bhagat called 2 States. Now story didn't actually have any influence on my making a decision to start writing, it was a situation where the hero of the story admits to the heroine that he wants to be a writer in future and the various other situations of the hero's life related to mine. One line in particular caught my attention and inspired me a lot, it was the line that the hero says "Someone who tells stories that are fun but bring about change too. The pen is mighter than the sword......." That was the first time I ever thought of writing. I became a huge Chetan Bhagat fan from then on.

After my high-school I choose a college which my parents didn't want me to go to but God was on my side and I had made the right decision. The college had a huge library that fed my hunger for books. I read so many of them that the librarian used to give me an extension to return the books for she was so happy that someone atleast showed interest in her well maintained library.
When I told mom about my plans to write a story when I was in my second year PU she asked me to try poetry. I did that and wrote dozens of poems, some of which were published in the college magazine and I also won second prize in poetry writing that year.
Later the same year I started writing a  story of my fun high school days but after 50 pages it was crap (it was the first time I had tried writing a full fledged story) so I dropped the idea. By this time Durjoy Datta, Nikitha Singh, Jeffrey Archer, Robin Sharma etc had entered my life.
In my first year degree the same friend who had forced me to buy 2 States suggested that I try blogging, I knew about blogs by then but didn't have confidence to try them but after my chat with her I started a blog.(but this is not that first blog) Thanks to my friends in degree who read what I wrote.
My dearest phone helped me a lot too for I read almost all the books on my phone. That is when I discovered Wattpad and after contemplating for a week (at this time I was reading a book by Durjoy Datta) I started writing my story on Wattpad, it is actually based on that novel of Mr Datta but only the first 2 chapters. Well, after that I started this blog.
So when I connect the dots I can say that if hadn't choosen that college or if my friend hadn't lent me Robinson Crusoe (thanks Hima) if I hadn't won that poetry competition or known how to download books on my phone or if I hadn't discovered Wattpad and blog's, but mainly if I hadn't read 2 States (thanks Deek for helping me choose that book and helping me making up my mind to start a blog) I don't think I would have​ ever thought about writing. I think I've given credits where they are required. I know I'm not a popularly successful writer but I don't why I felt like connecting these dots (thanks AIB for that video) and as I've said before that no one actually listen to what I say, let alone hear to all this that I've written now. Thanks Chetan Bhagat for writing that book.
From all this I've written now I discovered answer to one question which was from where I got inspiration to write or how I started writing?  It seems as if I've written some award acceptance speech, so touché :-) :-) but it was in a sudden moment that I decided to write.
I think it's ture that, Everything happens for a reason. I truly believe in it.

So now if you guys are wondering about the story on Wattpad, that I told you about it's called 'Once You Fall in Love' link below.
P.s: Veens thanks for being there for me always.

"Once You Fall In Love..........." by Vaishnavi1213 on Wattpad
http://my.w.tt/UiNb/wzyCMERSPB
Please do check it out. ;-)

Headache

I accept solemnly that blog is the real platform for people to went out, speak or write their heart out. Specially designed for people like me who have hard time explaining to people around me (so called family and friends) my thoughts or my point of view. Since not many people read what I write (for people who do, thank you so much, I love y'all) so I think I can write whatever I want. So that's it for as I'm having a problem logging into my Google account and it's giving me a headache. I have to figure it out now.