There are some books you don’t read — they read you. They peel you open like an orange, sting the soft inner parts you thought you’d hidden well, and leave you sitting in silence long after the final page has closed. The Bell Jar is that kind of book. I picked it up on a tired Tuesday night, expecting a literary classic with polite gloom, maybe a sprinkle of poetic sadness. Instead, it dragged me by the collar straight into the suffocating hush of a mind unravelling — and I’m

There are books you read with a cup of tea in hand, letting the warmth seep into your palms while the pages gently turn. And then there are books that snatch the cup right out of your grasp, sending it crashing to the floor because—what just happened? The Mussoorie Murders by Divyaroop Bhatnagar did exactly that to me. I opened it expecting a quiet weekend read. Instead, I found myself wide awake past midnight, staring at the ceiling, replaying clues like a detective who refu

The funny thing about constitutions is that most of us don’t think about them until something shakes us. A protest on the street. A headline that burns our eyes. A conversation that leaves us unsettled long after the tea has gone cold. For me, it happened on a quiet Sunday morning, sunlight spilling across my table, newspapers spread out like a battlefield of opinions—and suddenly, I felt the weight of a question I had never asked myself seriously: Do I truly understand the C

There are days that taste like heartbreak — metallic and cold — and there are days that smell of rain-soaked second chances. The Do-Over by Lynn Painter lives somewhere between the two, looping endlessly in that bittersweet space where pain and hope take turns holding your heart.   I still remember my first Lynn Painter read — Better Than the Movies — a warm, quirky rom-com that made me believe in the healing power of laughter. Painter has that uncanny gift: she writes teen s