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Four Broken Strings
Struggling artist Penny knows all about her bass. A cynic, in a little too perfect but almost boring life with a constantly absentee husband. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she seizes a fantastic opportunity at a studio that lets her breathe outside her monotonous life.
What begins as a distraction turns into her main focus as a sequence of incidents keeps her hooked with her ideal coworker.
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Note from Author
After getting amazing reviews from the reading community, friends, and family in 2018 (when I published my eBook on Amazon), I decided to polish my work until I felt like I could no longer. It's been years since then, but now, this feels like a great time for the work to be done. So her it is Four Broken Strings, finally in Paperback. I hope the readers enjoy it as much as I did writing for them.
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What begins as a distraction turns into her main focus as a sequence of incidents keeps her hooked with her ideal coworker.
--
Note from Author
After getting amazing reviews from the reading community, friends, and family in 2018 (when I published my eBook on Amazon), I decided to polish my work until I felt like I could no longer. It's been years since then, but now, this feels like a great time for the work to be done. So her it is Four Broken Strings, finally in Paperback. I hope the readers enjoy it as much as I did writing for them.
--
455 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2024
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 13, 2018
Here is a list of reasons why I didn’t like this book:
• Plot-what-plot: A woman named Penny has a boring, loveless relationship with her constantly-travelling husband. She gets a job, falls for a man at said job, is in complete denial about her feelings. Do the characters grow through this year? Are there lessons learned? Do we ship for anyone ever? Are there any conflicts worth caring about? Nope, nope, so much of the nope.
• Dull main character: Penny is a caricature of all the horrible tropes that we hope we never see in a woman anywhere. Doesn’t have any strong, healthy friendships, doesn’t like her own company, has no habits or interests to bolster herself up, can’t maintain interesting conversations, has no smart opinions, and is overall such a pointless person that it’s amazing that she’s the protagonist of a whole novel, much less the side character in a zombie apocalypse story who gets eaten first, sparing us all her annoying presence.
• Misogyny everywhere: Our protagonist judges all other females constantly, has no strong friendships with other women, can barely stand to be civil to her mother or sister in law, indulges in casual misogyny almost constantly, believes women are responsible for keeping a man in a relationship happy, judges the hero for reading a ‘girly book’.. I could go on and on, but I won’t, because such ingrained sexism and patriarchy is exhausting to deal with, and I just can’t.
• Pointless love interests: Both Penny’s husband and the guy she likes are so tedious that it’s amazing that she is conflicted about choosing between them. What even is the appeal? Her husband barely appears, unless it’s to fight so horribly with his wife that he willfully breaks apart the one guitar that she actually loves. The love interest, Kabir, is the most unremarkable, lackluster character ever. It’s hard to feel much about his existence, much less ship him with our heroine. In a story where the main point is the conflict in love, the story spectacularly crashes and burns.
• Poor chemistry: I get that complex, well-written relationships, even about adultery, can be amazing, can be literature worth analysing and praising. Even though I feel strongly about how horrible adultery is, one of my favourite novels is about a love triangle, and a couple breaking up because of the adulterous wife. But though Love, Etc. could also be said to be about relationships and nothing else, it still says everything it needs to says about narratives of choice and the complications of love in such beautiful ways. In this story, unfortunately, there is no explicable pull between Penny and Kabir, two unremarkable characters who do less falling in love and more spending time with each other because they’re bored and apparently can’t make good life decisions. Where’s the spark, the chemistry, that undeniable pull so that you want to look away even as you know they’re going to crash together? What makes Penny want to be with Kabir even though she knows she shouldn’t? Absolutely nothing.
• Really, really bad writing: Can’t stress this enough. And I mean this in more ways than one: bad in terms of sentence structure and flow, and also really, really poor in terms of the words themselves. At one point in the story the word ‘you’ is written as ‘u’. ‘Nough said.
• Poor punctuation: The misuse of commas is insane. I understand that commas are a pretty subjective thing; as an editor, the fights I fight are less about spelling – although those do happen – but more about punctuation. Commas are the bane of my existence day in and day out, so to see them used in so horrific a manner does something to my insides, and not in a good way either. I had to fight the itch to take a red pen and start crossing them out
The bad stuff went one and on: our characters make fun of people with disabilities, with the word ‘retard’ used as an insult almost constantly. There is barely any complexity to motivations for why people do things. The romance is lackluster. You are, of course, welcome to read the book itself to ensure that all the things I’ve mentioned are actually true. Usually I quote direct passages from anything I review to provide a reference point or some proof of what I’m talking about, but having read this book once, I could not inflict upon myself the sort of torture required to go through it again looking for extracts. I mean, even masochism must have its limits.
If you had to grade this novel on a curve, it’s slightly better than the worst thing I’ve ever read. But being slightly than the actual worst doesn’t actually make anything better. Please, do yourself a favour, and stay far away.
***
This review is for an Advanced Reader's Copy, and the final text can be subject to changes.
***
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Review to come.
• Plot-what-plot: A woman named Penny has a boring, loveless relationship with her constantly-travelling husband. She gets a job, falls for a man at said job, is in complete denial about her feelings. Do the characters grow through this year? Are there lessons learned? Do we ship for anyone ever? Are there any conflicts worth caring about? Nope, nope, so much of the nope.
• Dull main character: Penny is a caricature of all the horrible tropes that we hope we never see in a woman anywhere. Doesn’t have any strong, healthy friendships, doesn’t like her own company, has no habits or interests to bolster herself up, can’t maintain interesting conversations, has no smart opinions, and is overall such a pointless person that it’s amazing that she’s the protagonist of a whole novel, much less the side character in a zombie apocalypse story who gets eaten first, sparing us all her annoying presence.
• Misogyny everywhere: Our protagonist judges all other females constantly, has no strong friendships with other women, can barely stand to be civil to her mother or sister in law, indulges in casual misogyny almost constantly, believes women are responsible for keeping a man in a relationship happy, judges the hero for reading a ‘girly book’.. I could go on and on, but I won’t, because such ingrained sexism and patriarchy is exhausting to deal with, and I just can’t.
• Pointless love interests: Both Penny’s husband and the guy she likes are so tedious that it’s amazing that she is conflicted about choosing between them. What even is the appeal? Her husband barely appears, unless it’s to fight so horribly with his wife that he willfully breaks apart the one guitar that she actually loves. The love interest, Kabir, is the most unremarkable, lackluster character ever. It’s hard to feel much about his existence, much less ship him with our heroine. In a story where the main point is the conflict in love, the story spectacularly crashes and burns.
• Poor chemistry: I get that complex, well-written relationships, even about adultery, can be amazing, can be literature worth analysing and praising. Even though I feel strongly about how horrible adultery is, one of my favourite novels is about a love triangle, and a couple breaking up because of the adulterous wife. But though Love, Etc. could also be said to be about relationships and nothing else, it still says everything it needs to says about narratives of choice and the complications of love in such beautiful ways. In this story, unfortunately, there is no explicable pull between Penny and Kabir, two unremarkable characters who do less falling in love and more spending time with each other because they’re bored and apparently can’t make good life decisions. Where’s the spark, the chemistry, that undeniable pull so that you want to look away even as you know they’re going to crash together? What makes Penny want to be with Kabir even though she knows she shouldn’t? Absolutely nothing.
• Really, really bad writing: Can’t stress this enough. And I mean this in more ways than one: bad in terms of sentence structure and flow, and also really, really poor in terms of the words themselves. At one point in the story the word ‘you’ is written as ‘u’. ‘Nough said.
• Poor punctuation: The misuse of commas is insane. I understand that commas are a pretty subjective thing; as an editor, the fights I fight are less about spelling – although those do happen – but more about punctuation. Commas are the bane of my existence day in and day out, so to see them used in so horrific a manner does something to my insides, and not in a good way either. I had to fight the itch to take a red pen and start crossing them out
The bad stuff went one and on: our characters make fun of people with disabilities, with the word ‘retard’ used as an insult almost constantly. There is barely any complexity to motivations for why people do things. The romance is lackluster. You are, of course, welcome to read the book itself to ensure that all the things I’ve mentioned are actually true. Usually I quote direct passages from anything I review to provide a reference point or some proof of what I’m talking about, but having read this book once, I could not inflict upon myself the sort of torture required to go through it again looking for extracts. I mean, even masochism must have its limits.
If you had to grade this novel on a curve, it’s slightly better than the worst thing I’ve ever read. But being slightly than the actual worst doesn’t actually make anything better. Please, do yourself a favour, and stay far away.
***
This review is for an Advanced Reader's Copy, and the final text can be subject to changes.
***
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Review to come.
November 8, 2018
Amazing read. The way writer builds the relationships between the characters and explores the boundaries of those relationships is truly amazing. At first when I started reading it, it seemed kind of slow, but then as the story built up I could not keep the book down, definitely a page turner.
Loved the way writer describes Penny’s thought process and how she deals with different life challenges. Really enjoyed the way writer explores the idea that at times we know and understand what we feel, but cannot really act on it because of society norms, moral values and responsibilities.
Look forward to reading other books by the writer.
Loved the way writer describes Penny’s thought process and how she deals with different life challenges. Really enjoyed the way writer explores the idea that at times we know and understand what we feel, but cannot really act on it because of society norms, moral values and responsibilities.
Look forward to reading other books by the writer.
November 6, 2018
just finished reading this book and i must say its a refreshing piece of work. The light hearted tone, tongue in cheek humor, and the oh so relatable characters, especially the undeniable yet palpable chemistry between Penny and Kabir, made me go through the book coz i wanted to find out what she decides and i felt the writer has justified the ending for Penny and her husband. I loved Penny's thought process and how she deals with her insecurities, and in the middle of everything that goes on her being a bass player stands true. If you are looking for something to ease your mind away from tough work, this book provides a perfect little window of escape where you dont have to go through any heart wrenching intrigues or deep emotional scars, just enough to divert and engage. good job from this up and coming author!
November 6, 2018
It is very rare that a character that is cynical can give you hope, well PENNY did. HOPE that we all are not flawless, that there is no age to make mistakes, and that we learn from those mistakes and move on.
Four Broken Strings is a coming-of-age debut novel by Rubab Masuri about relationships, family, and love. The author has told us a story, more like a MUSE of, not-so-wise, cynic and always-bored Penny who is living a miserable and monotonous married life. The only thing that keeps her going is EMO (her Bass) and her never-ending love for music. Her life takes a swift turn when she lands an accidental job in a music production company "Madock". She hopes that this new job of her will give her a change, little did she know that this “CHANGE” she anticipated will change the course of her life completely when she befriended her so-perfect, too-good-to-be-true colleague Kabir.
Penny will make you laugh with her spontaneity, will make you angry with her impulsive decisions, will make you face-palm with her stupidities but also will make you ponder with your inner fears, insecurities, and uncertainties. She will make you realize that we all have a cynical Penny inside us all that is constantly growing and learning.
5 Stars for a great debut!
P.S. If you like poetry, there will be surprise treats for you in the book too.
Four Broken Strings is a coming-of-age debut novel by Rubab Masuri about relationships, family, and love. The author has told us a story, more like a MUSE of, not-so-wise, cynic and always-bored Penny who is living a miserable and monotonous married life. The only thing that keeps her going is EMO (her Bass) and her never-ending love for music. Her life takes a swift turn when she lands an accidental job in a music production company "Madock". She hopes that this new job of her will give her a change, little did she know that this “CHANGE” she anticipated will change the course of her life completely when she befriended her so-perfect, too-good-to-be-true colleague Kabir.
Penny will make you laugh with her spontaneity, will make you angry with her impulsive decisions, will make you face-palm with her stupidities but also will make you ponder with your inner fears, insecurities, and uncertainties. She will make you realize that we all have a cynical Penny inside us all that is constantly growing and learning.
5 Stars for a great debut!
P.S. If you like poetry, there will be surprise treats for you in the book too.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews