Men On My Mind by Radha Thomas

Title : Men On My Mind
Author : Radha Thomas
Genre : Fiction / ChickLit
Publisher : Rupa Publications
Pages : 270
My Rating : 6.5/10
Reviewed For : Storizen TV

Blurb:

A hugely entertaining novel about love, sex and adventure.

You’re a girl from the land of the Kamasutra. And everyone expects your love skills to comprise the acrobatic, the inventive, the superlative. You try, of course, to game- ly meet the baffling requirements of the men who walk in and out of your life. But how much can you really do, when your investments yield minimum returns and maximum weirdness? When your mothers words keep ringing in your head: You need at least five men to fulfil you, sweetie. Remember Draupadi?
From starry-eyed crushes to lustful longings, from Catholic convents to raucous nightclubs, from boarding-school bloomers to the Open Butterfly g-string, from lov- ers to stalkers to philanderers Radha Thomas takes you on a crazy ride through Mumbai, Delhi, Beijing, Rotorua and New York, in the age-old quest for The One. A wickedly funny and flirtatious book about that mysterious thing called love, Men on My Mind is a delicious mix of sex, adventure and discovery that you must not resist.

My Review:

The search for the “Elusive Mr. Right” has provided quite some fodder for a few delightfully dishy reads in Chick Lit and has proven to be a successful formula for many a RomComs. As the name suggests, ‘Men on my Mind’ is quintessentially the journey of a young, innocent 7-year old who has her moment of epiphany when she eavesdrops on a conversation between her mom & her aunt. Wherein, her mom explains to her aunt that every woman needs at least five men to fulfill her & goes on to describe each man & his usefulness in detail. Armed with this knowledge, our girl starts off the journey of finding her Mr. Right from this tender age. What follows is a series of humorous/embarrassing/painful incidents as she experiments with a series of men from possessive loonies to pathetic kissers to drug addicts to two timers. But she never loses hope, takes it all in her stride and shinnies her way through the dangerous minefield of BFFs & boyfriend to ultimately find The One who would eventually makes her toes curl & nose tingle over just a smouldering stare!! The fact that India is the land of Kama sutra & Draupadi who needed five men to fulfil her is used expended & employed by the author to elaborate on our heroine’s various shades of grey.

The cover depicts pair of legs with shoes in one foot & heels in another which perhaps depict the transition of the protagonist as she globe trots from the chaste environment at a nun-dictated boarding to across the seven seas in search of True Love. This and the other elements on the cover page (guitar, martinis and so on) give a kaleidoscope view of her social life & her various sexcapades.

Men on my Mind is a frank yet unblushing chronology of our protagonist’s experiments with men where she only has knowledge that is borrowed from BFFs or read in M&Bs or drawn from fantasies or learnt from her own past experiences. Although she studies in the celibate environment of a convent, it leaves her lusting more than ever & describes the various perils that she undergoes to start her voyage with boys. After her schooling, her family shifts from Mumbai to Delhi & she has her brush with men in the capital city. Yet “The One” remains elusive. Finally she is packed off to the States to live with her aunt & do something in her life other than finding boys who would be ready to deflower her virginity. Initially, the debauchery might be a little too much to take but as the book progresses, you develop a sense of solidarity with the heroine as she juggles with more than one relationship at a time, loses her BFFs as easily as her men and has one night stands without any regrets.

When I started with the first chapter I thought that it was a memoir of sorts. However, as the novel progressed, I found it to be a well paced, candidly penned story. In addition to the character of the protagonist, the secondary characters (or more accurately – the various men in her life) are all well developed. However, there was an overload of men that tended to seem a bit of a drag towards the end. The ending, too, seemed a bit abrupt as if rounded off hastily which may leave the reader unsatiated. Of course, after following our heroine’s journey tediously from one loser to another the reader would always want a full blown account of the elusive happy ending at the end. But, since this is the first part of a trilogy, I guess the author has purposely kept it a secret & built up the suspense for the second book. All in all, this is a light, funny read which can be breezed through in a single sitting.

(The review copy has been provided by Storizen TV. This review is entirely my own personal & honest opinion. I do not receive any kind of payment or monetary gains for my review.)

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