4.5 stars

Prem Purana by Usha Narayanan is a collection of 3 short stories. The first story revolves around a much loved God – Ganesha (and his brides), the second one is the story of the widely feared demon king – Ravana (and Mandodari), and the third tale is of a well known mortal king – Nala (and Damayanti).

All 3 of these stories made for interesting reads, as they were informative while being entertaining. Now of-course, since I read a lot in the genre, I was already aware of many of these stories, so there was some amount of repetition (for me), but for someone relatively new to the genre, this will be an absolute treasure.

Having said that, there were many things I found out after reading this book. For one, I had no idea that Ganesha had 3 wives and not 2. For some reason I always assumed that Riddhi, Siddhi were Ganesha’s 2 wives, and was completely clueless about Buddhi.

Though let me tell you, this small surprise was completely inconsequential compared to the shocker that waited for me in Ravana & Mandodari’s story. I used to think that I knew Ramayana and Mahabharata backwards & forwards, but there was one big reveal in Story #2, which totally blew my mind!

All in all, this was a wonderful read, which stayed true to its promise, and delivered not one, but three wonderful, yet dramatically different love stories. Highly recommend to everyone who loves this genre (or not). Read this book. 4.5 stars

– Shantala at Shanaya Tales