I was pretty good till the end of the story but the end of the book completely broke me and I think it was perhaps the onions that was making me teary eyed. This book had been on my TBR for almost a year now and in a frantic rush to meet my goodreads challenge I picked the book and mentally smacked myself for not picking it up before. Let me warn you that this book is very heavy on emotions and it just messes with your heart especially towards the end.

Let me begin with what disturbed me or what kind of didn't work for me in the book first so that we get out the unsavoury part first. I am usually not a fan of the dialogue styled conversation in books because I find it very distracting and hard to follow while tracking who is speaking the lines. So that is an individual taste thing so yeah that was one thing that kind of made me feel, stopped the book from reaching perfection. The other being the fact that the book kind of goes surface bound in its style of narration. It glides through the events one by one but I felt it didn't went a bit deeper into these events. The book also had some actually chess moves in between the story. Like literal game screenshots which took quite a few portion that I kept wondering what exactly was it offering to the story in general. Also Had the narration been a bit more poised and deeply invested in the events the result would have a very intense and emotional read.

Believe me the book is still pretty intense and jostles pretty bad but the narration is kind of quick and fast but then again so much is happening in the book that I think it shouldn't hamper your experience with the story

Now lets talks about the good part. Hands down its the very plot itself. It goes through so much of twists and turns that you simply can resist yourself from wanting to know what comes next. There are so many mind games and domino effects in play that it makes it one hell of an adrenaline rush.

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I had trouble connecting with the characters and the story. The characters seemed to go through a confusing set of emotions - all at once(at one moment they are happy and angry the next). The narration alternates between First-person POV and third-person POV and it was difficult to follow. Like, you read a set of dialogues between the two characters and the next paragraph starts with 'I'. I did not finish the book as I could not follow the story.

A story in two parts first the crime then redemption.
The plot was original and relevant to what has become a worrying trade well written and exciting, however
I found the answer motivated by revenge over the top and unnecessary as the same result could have been achieved without the carnage. For me it made no sense.
The redemption was so drawn out with much wailing and crying a heavy edit was needed for it became repetitive interfering with otherwise a well written piece.
Still worth 4 stars.
An independent review thanks to NetGalley

The cover and title gave me an impression of mythological and fantasy world thriller. And the description blew it. I felt thril 😯.
The story spans through decades in a small town. The plot starts with a bang, a revelation that something big had happened or going to happen. Thril 😯.
As the narration resumes the characters are queued and the story develops. Then comes the mysterious deaths, abductions and masked men, unwitty investigations. Thril 😯.
The pace of the story is smooth like butter and can be read in one sitting. What made me impatience is the extended romance and family drama. There are a lot of narration repeats and actions. The last 5 to 7 chapters are too dramatic and emotional rather mystery and thril 😟.
However, the author used ucid language which makes it a good read for beginners/who wants to start a mystery novel.
I loved the representation of chess game. The last couple of chapters are way emotional to me that brought me almost tears... Yeah 😂😂😂. I really devoured the protagonist and his company.
A good read. Expecting an nail biting thriller next time.
Thanks to Netgalley and the author.

I would like to thank Neeraj Bharti for reaching out to me through Goodreads and offering the book in return for my honest review and feedback. Also, thanks to Netgalley for providing me this book free of cost :)
 
‘The Curse to Ashwathama’ is a thriller novel written in a simple language which makes it a quick read. The plot is also gripping and keeps the reader glued till the end. The writer builds the plot around a series of murder which jolts the city of Ratnagiri (a city in Maharashtra) for over a period of 5 years. The police fail to nab the gang who abducts the local tribal and residents of Ratnagiri in the dark hours of the nights, killing them post extracting all the vital organs from the victim's body. The descriptions of murder scenes are quite vivid and at times, you will find yourself so engrossed in the story that it will be difficult to keep down the book. Some of the chapters are very well written. Especially the chapters close to the end of the book (The Decipher, Death Wish) are quite emotional and you would be able to feel the pain of the Characters - Preeti, Sahil, and Thakur.
 
The only thing that I did not like in the book was the repetition of narratives. There is a number of instances where the writer has just re-written the entire dialogue which is already covered in the previous chapters of the book. Come-on, the memories of the readers are not so short-lived that you need to re-narrate the entire conversations of the characters!!  Apart from that, I enjoyed reading "The Curse to Ashwathama" by Neeraj Bharti.

"The Curse To Ashwathama” by Neeraj Bharti

Unfortunately, this is one of the worst books I have ever read. The editor should be ashamed to have released the book for any kind of public consumption in its present form. Its setting might possibly appeal to a reader from India but its plot, characters, dialogue, poor grammar and style are not for a sophisticated and knowledgable reader. I found at least four major errors in grammar, syntax, inappropriate word choice or spelling on every page. I have never read a novel in which the characters are noted by namer beside their dialogue, as you would find them in a play.
The language goes from pretentious to silly: the author uses some rather difficult and showy words, as if he worked with a thesaurus in one hand, often choosing a word that is totally inappropriate. “Floor” is often used for “ground”, “rouged” was used when I think he meant “reddened” or “blushed”.Words are repeated multiple times (how often can a character speak with “a straight face”) and words describing how they speak are overworked as well - “screech,
shrill”. The book is possibly badly translated from another language into English, very poorly edited, or terribly amateurish. There are so many holes and inconsistencies in the plot it would be exhausting to list them all here.
The underlying story concerns a student who returns from college to his family home, only to discover a heinous crime in progress. I don’t want to give the story away here, but as he becomes entangled in a human organ-selling racket he is surrounded by bloody scenes of body snatchers and murderers. The characters range from naive to just plain stupid as the plot crawls along to resolution.
I finished the book only to see if it got better, (it didn’t, in my opinion) and because I hoped I would be able to make some positive comments. Sometimes reading can be so subjective, like looking at a painting and understanding it is a fine piece of work even if you don’t necessarily like the subject, style, or colors. I tried but simply could not find anything redeeming about this book, which was supplied to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review.