Review: Beautiful Story of Life, Love, Loss and Moving Forward
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 23, 2013
Let me start by saying that I loved A Deconstructed Heart! It was a sweetly poetic, easy read. Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed's writing style has a soothing, melodic quality that invites readers to be drawn into her stories easily. I was hooked from the beginning and immediately found myself looking forward to what would happen next.I've always enjoyed reading about other cultures and A Deconstructed Heart gives readers a nice glimpse into the ordinary lives of several Indian families, allowing us to see that everyone is the same when it comes to affairs of the heart. The relationship between Mirza and Amal was touching and it was a pleasure to see how the two characters, regardless of their generational differences, were able to help each other with life and love. Although Amal had initially arrived to help Mirza during his time of grief over the collapse of his marriage, Mirza was instrumental in helping Amal move forward in her life as well.A Deconstructed Heart, as mentioned in the description, is a novella and therefore an easy, fairly fast read. Yet, readers won't feel at all cheated by the length. Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed does a superb job of charmingly telling each character's story and tying things up nicely at the end. I was especially impressed with the way she allowed the characters to grow and progress, despite being confronted with several life-changing events. I would highly recommend A Deconstructed Heart be put on anyone's must read list.