A Dark Love Story by Shairoz K. Anwarali: Book Review

In today’s fiction, nothing is unusual. We do have a few benchmarks, or touchstones, as Matthew Arnold called, to judge the works by others – whether original or not. Well, this benchmark philosophy may not go well with coming of age authors as they struggle to make a place for them, amidst tight competition, in the literary landscape. Shairoz K. Anwarali is an emerging novelist and she has written a book, better put in fantasy and thriller genre, A Dark Love Story. As the name suggests, the book is romance for sure but with a few twists that might be thrilling or chilling for the readers as well as dark. What are those?

A Dark Love Story starts with Ella, the lead protagonist who is an orphan living in an orphanage. She is unknown to herself. She does not know her parents. However, she is a brilliant girl (as she had to be) and secures a place for her, on the merits by winning a scholarship, in a prestigious school. However, her journey to the school is covered on foot and this might raise a few pair of eyebrows in among the readers…

Things become interesting with the introduction of mysterious characters in the form of Parkers. Parker William O’Brien is the central parker whom the readers will be seeing and listening to a lot in the novel. He is a vampire and there you go…

The storyline is, by and large, crafted as a movie and you will notice that. There might be instances when many of the readers might say – it could have done this way. Well, the novelist has tried her best with many other things and she has been successful in concealing what she had to and revealing what she wanted. So, being a debutante, we have to appreciate her plot skills, to a large extent.

The theme of love has been utilised by the novelist very well. The readers will get to see sacrifice, passion and many other shades of love between Ella and Parker. Things have gone mostly well and the experience with this vampire love story has been titled towards better rather than just being good. A fresh intervention in the ongoing vampire saga in the world of English fiction.

So, I give it a thumbs up and I do recommend Shairoz K. Anwarali’s debut novel A Dark Love Story to the readers who love reading thriller novels with many dark secrets hidden behind the veil of text that we read in the book… are you up for it?

Get a copy of this work from Amazon by clicking the link given below:

Buy the book here – Amazon India

Review by a reader for The Last Critic