Writing means many things to many people. For some, it is a hobby or a passion, but for some, it’s nothing less than a therapy and an effective stress buster.
A year and a half ago, Kavipriya Moorthy, a young author, left a well-paying job at Dubai and turned to writing. She had some experience blogging and a few works to her credit, but for the first time she decided to step into the literary world. Surprisingly, it was a genre that’s not widely known in our country.
It was quite a challenge she had taken up to straight-up write chick lit, but after months of persistence, and constant writing and editing drafts, her self-published debut novella ‘I Don’t Wear Sunscreen’ hit the markets through ‘Notion Press Publication’ about this time last year.
When I first asked her what the book was all about, she said that it was something she wrote out of her own personal experiences. The dialogues truthfully portray people’s reaction in certain situations, and the words used are simple and straight from the heart.
‘I Don’t Wear Sunscreen’ tells the story of a girl, Laksha, who has it all going, until she falls for a misogamist. Her relation with her best friend of many years turns tumultuous, and everything comes crashing down. With a unique title that strikes a chord among the readers of chick lit, the book stands out with a plot that talks about the most common issues a middle-class woman faces. It’s not a fairy tale or a quest for true love. It deals with the way we build and lose relations that are important to us and the struggle for identity and happiness that every middle-class woman fights for, irrespective of who she is or where she comes from.
Laksha is a character in whom the author sees herself, and she is such a protagonist that even the reader will identify with her, at least once, through the course of the book. Kavi’s flair for writing mushy romance scenes is definitely commendable. You wonder how she can write such drool-worthy scenes. It would not be a surprise, however, for those familiar with her quirky He-Me Stories, which are inspired from slices of life.
The book slows down in a few places, but this is easily missed, given Moorthy’s otherwise quick pace and engrossing scenes. It will definitely be enjoyed by the reader who is looking for a light-hearted, fast-paced book, and especially by those who believe that it’s alright not to know every single detail and character of a book deeply.
The writer, who celebrated her birthday recently, is gearing up for her second novel ‘Dirty Martini’; but this time, it’s not mere chick-lit, it’s something more!
We, at Caleidoscope, wish Kavipriya Moorthy a belated happy birthday and the best of luck for her upcoming, most ambitious work yet!
