Published: 3rd February 2015
Publisher: Prairie Sky Publishing
Pages: 77
Format: ebook
Genre: Short stories/Romance
★ ★ ★ ★ – 4 Stars
A man and a woman get their divorce papers right after the wedding. A woman learns she’s suffering from amnesia. Two stories about relationships and the power of love. Two stories with characters to remember. Two stories for the heart.
“The Proposal”: Pooja and Akshay don’t want to bother with relationships, but they get cornered into marriage. The two devise a fool-proof plan: get married, then get their divorce papers ready. But will they have the guts to go through with the break up?
“Remembrance”: Helen wakes up in the hospital, but she has no idea how she got there. Everyone dodges the question…and then the sister she hasn’t spoken to in 11 years arrives. Why is she here? And will Helen ever remember what happened?
Note: I was provided with a copy of this book from the author for review.
Garg’s collection of stories is a wonderful read that explores relationships and the power love has in those relationships. The two stories, “The Proposal” and “Remembrance”, follow very different narratives but each demonstrate that love can be a very powerful tool and motivator.
I think I enjoyed the first story, “The Proposal”, more than the second, and while I enjoyed the mystery of the second story, the story itself in the first was quite heart warming and sweet.
Both of these stories are quite short, but you really are able to get a sense of character quite well. Garg expresses and explores her characters through their personalities and in part through their actions which adds a great layer of complexities to them. There is also less focus on unnecessary scenes or intense description or detail, meaning the human aspects are the main focus and the relationships they have with others is a driving force to the narrative.
There are some surprises in the stories, not greatly shocking or twist worthy per se, but Garg holds back and keeps secrets, and she also leads the reader and tells them one thing while leaving possibilities open for other things, offering doubt and intrigue.
It is also a nice idea connecting the stories and Garg does this with style and simplicity without losing any of the quality. The overlap suits both narratives while not interrupting the flow of each individual story and adds another layer in doing so. Having the cross over so simple is a great example of how people connect with one another in the real world. Both these stories show that the main character of one story can be a background character in another and even be unrelated to the main character at all.
But I think what makes them work is that being connected makes you realise everyone has a story to tell; and being a background character in someone’s story does not mean you are not the main character of your own story. Which sounds very philosophical I’ll admit, but I did find myself thing about that when I had finished reading, very clever, intentional or otherwise, on Garg’s behalf.
You can easily see how each of these stories could be extended in to a longer one, even a novel if you tried hard enough, but why it works so well keeping it this length is that is keeps the main parts of the story in focus while not losing out on the content or quality.
You can purchase Two for the Heart via the following
Lost in a Good Book 
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