Perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes’s, Me
Before You, My Last Love Story is a heartbreakingly romantic tale about the
complexities of trauma and whether love can right a wrong.
I, Simeen Desai, am tired of making
lemonade with the lemons life has handed me.
Love is meant to heal
wounds.
Love was meant to make my world
sparkle and spin.
Love has ripped my life apart and
shattered my soul.
I love my husband, and he loves
me.
But Nirvaan is
dying.
I love my husband. I want to make
him happy.
But he is asking for the impossible.
I don’t want a
baby.
I don’t want to make nice with
Zayaan.
I don’t want another chance at
another love story.
Book
Links:
Interview
1. When did you realize that there is a writer in you?
In 2010, when my mother forced me to “do something with my brain” and I stumbled across some creative writing workshops while looking at online college lit classes.
2. What books have most influenced your life?
I wouldn’t say influenced my life, but these books have definitely influenced my brain: Pride and Prejudice, The God Delusion, The Mahabharata, The Great Transformation, Julius Caesar and many more.
3. How do you develop your plots and characters?
I develop my characters first, as they come to me first. Then, the plot organically emerges around them.
4. How did you come up with the title of this book?
My working title for this story was Love Undeniable. Heart Unreliable. For about 60% of my first draft, this title was stuck in my head. I thought it held a nice ring of truth to it. But then I wrote a scene between Simeen and Nirvaan in which she tells him that he was her last love story. It was like an epiphany.
5. Is there a message in your novel that you hope readers will grasp?
There are plenty of messages in MLLS—about letting love into your life; about letting go of prejudices; about relationships; and about forgiveness.
6. How much of the book is realistic?
I hope the whole book is realistic. But if you mean what parts are taken from real experiences, I’d say about 40% of the book. I have known cancer patients. I know women going through IVF. I know about disease and death and what a family goes through to take care of a terminal patient. I’ve seen and/ or experienced many of the events that happen in the book.
7. What was the hardest part of writing this book?
The progression of Nirvaan’s cancer.
8. What do you love the most about writing process?
The writing itself. The creating of new characters, different personalities, unusual settings and worlds.
9. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
That I loved writing. I used to hate it in school and college. I thought writing was the most tedious and painful thing ever. I was good at writing, mind you. It’s just that I found it restrictive back then.
10. Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?
Read lots of different books. Recommend the books you have enjoyed to your friends. And leave reviews, please. It helps.
Read
an Excerpt:
Dear
Readers, thank you for coming along on the My Last Love Story Blog Tour. Here’s
an excerpt to enjoy.
ONE
“Love
is a dish best served naked.”
As
a child, those oft-quoted words of my father would have me rolling my eyes and
pretending to gag at what I’d imagined was my parents’ precursor to a certain
physical act.
At
thirty, I’d long ago realized that getting naked wasn’t a euphemism for
sex.
Neither
was love.
It
wasn’t my father wording the meme just now but my husband. Nirvaan considered
himself a great wit, a New Age philosopher. On the best of days, he was, much
like Daddy had been. On the worst days, he was my
tormentor.
“What
do you think, Dr. Archer? Interesting enough tagline for a vlog? What about
‘Baby in a Petri Dish’?” Nirvaan persisted in eliciting a response from the
doctor and/or me for his ad hoc comedy, which we’d been ignoring for several
minutes now.
I
wanted to glare at him, beg him to shut up, or demand that he wait in the
doctor’s office like he should’ve done, like a normal husband would have.
Khodai knows why he’d insisted on holding my hand through this preliminary
checkup. Nothing of import would happen today—if it did at all. But I couldn’t
perform any such communication, not with my eyes and mouth squeezed shut while
I suffered through a series of uncomfortable twinges along my nether
regions.
I
lay flat on my back on a spongy clinic bed sheeted with paper already wrinkled
and half torn. Legs drawn up and spread apart, my heels dug punishingly into
cold iron stirrups to allow my gynecologist’s clever fingers to reach inside my
womb and check if everything was A-OK in there. We’d already funneled through
the Pap test and stomach and chest checks. Like them, this test, too, was going
swell in light of Dr. Archer’s approving happy hums.
“Excellent,
Mrs. Desai. All parts are where they should be,” he joked only as a doctor
could.
I
shuddered out the breath I’d been holding, as the feeling of being stretched
left my body. Nirvaan squeezed my hand and planted a smacking kiss on my
forehead. I opened my eyes and focused on his beaming upside-down ones. His
eyelids barely grew lashes anymore—I’d counted twenty-seven in total just last
week—the effect of years of chemotherapy. For a second, my gaze blurred, my
heart wavered, and I almost cried.
What
are we doing, Nirvaan? What in Khodai’s name were we starting?
Nirvaan
stroked my hair, his pitch-black pupils steady and knowing and oh-so stubborn.
Then, his face rose to the stark white ceiling, and all I saw was the
green-and-blue mesh of his gingham shirt—the overlapping threads, the
crisscross weaves, a pattern without end.
Life
is what you make it, child. It was another one of my father’s
truisms.
Swallowing
the questions twirling on my tongue, I refocused my mind on why we were here.
I’d promised Nirvaan we’d try for a baby if he agreed to another round of
cancer-blasting treatments. I’d bartered for a few more months of my husband’s
life. He’d bartered for immortality through our child.
Dr.
Archer rolled away from between my legs to the computer station. He snapped off
and disposed of the latex gloves. Then, he began typing notes in near-soundless
staccato clicks. Though the examination was finished, I knew better than to sit
up until he gave me leave. I’d been here before, done this before—two years ago
when Nirvaan had been in remission and the idea of having a baby had wormed its
way into his head. We’d tried the most basic procedures then, whatever our
medical coverage had allowed. We hadn’t been desperate yet to use our own
money, which we shouldn’t be touching even now. We needed every penny we had
for emergencies and alternative treatments, but try budging my husband once
he’d made up his mind.
“I’m
a businessman, Simi. I only pour money into a sure thing,” he rebuked when I
argued.
I
brought my legs together, manufacturing what poise and modesty I could, and
pulled the sea-green hospital gown bunched beneath my bottom across my
half-naked body. I refused to look at my husband as I wriggled about, positive
his expression would be pregnant with irony, if not fully smirking. And kudos
to him for not jumping in to help me like I would have.
The
tables had turned on us today. For the past five years, it’d been Nirvaan
thrashing about on hospital beds, trying in vain to find relief and comfort,
modesty or release. Nirvaan had been poked, prodded, sliced, and bled as he
battled aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’d been the stoic spectator, the
supportive wife, the incompetent nurse, the ineffectual
lover.
And
now? What role would I play now?
As
always, thinking about our life left me feeling even more naked than I was in
the open-fronted robe. I turned my face to the wall, my eyes stinging, as fear
and frustration bubbled to the surface. Flesh-toned posters of laughing babies,
pregnant mothers, and love-struck fathers hung from the bluish walls. Side by
side were the more educative ones of human anatomy, vivisected and whole. The
test-tube-like exam room of Monterey Bay Fertility Clinic was decorated in true
California beach colors—sea-foam walls, sandy floors, pearl-pink curtains, and
furniture—bringing the outdoors in. If the decor was meant to be homey, it
wasn’t having such an effect on me. This room, like this town and even this
country, was not my natural habitat, and I felt out of my element in
it.
I’d
lived in California for seven years now, ever since my marriage, and I still
didn’t think of it as home, not like Nirvaan did. Home for me was India. And no
matter the dark memories it held, home would always be Surat.
“All
done.” Dr. Archer pushed the computer trolley away and stood up. “You can get
dressed, Mrs. Desai. Take your time. Use whatever supplies you need. We’ll wait
for you in my office,” he said, smiling.
Finally,
I can cover myself, I thought. Gooseflesh had erupted across my skin due to the
near frigid clinic temperatures doctors tortured their patients with—like a
patient didn’t have enough to suffer already. Medical facilities maintained
cool indoor temperatures to deter inveterate germs from contaminating the
premises and so its vast flotilla of equipment didn’t fry. I knew that. But
knowing it still didn’t inspire any warm feelings in me for the “throng of
professional sadists with a god complex.” I quoted my husband
there.
Nirvaan
captured my attention with a pat on my head. “See you soon, baby,” he said,
following the doctor out of the room.
I
scooted off the bed as soon as the door shut behind them. My hair tumbled down
my face and shoulders at my jerky movements. I smoothed it back with shaking
hands. Long, wavy, and a deep chestnut shade, my hair was my crowning glory, my
one and only feature that was lush and arresting. Nirvaan loved my hair. I
wasn’t to cut it or even braid it in his presence, and so it often got
hopelessly knotted.
I
shrugged off the clinic gown, balled it up, and placed it on the bed. I wiped
myself again and again with antiseptic wipes, baby wipes, and paper towels
until the tissues came away stain-free. I didn’t feel light-headed. I didn’t
allow myself to freak. I concentrated on the flow of my breaths and the
pounding of my heart until they both slowed to normal.
It
was okay. I was not walking out with a gift-wrapped baby in tow. Not today. No
reason to freak out.
I
reached for my clothes and slipped on my underwear. They were beige with tiny
white hearts on them—Victoria’s Secret lingerie Nirvaan had leered and whistled
at this morning.
Such
a silly man. Typical Nirvaan, I corrected, twisting my lips.
Even
after dressing in red-wash jeans and a full-sleeved sweater, I shivered. My
womb still felt invaded and odd. As I stepped into my red patent leather pumps,
an unused Petri dish sitting on the workstation countertop caught my
eye.
The
trigger for Nirvaan’s impromptu comedy, perhaps?
Despite
major misgivings about the Hitleresque direction my life had taken, humor got
the better of me, and I grinned.
Silly,
silly Nirvaan. Baby in a Petri dish, indeed.
About the
Author:
Falguni Kothari is an
internationally bestselling hybrid author and an amateur Latin and Ballroom
dance silver medalist with a background in Indian Classical dance. She writes
in a variety of genres sewn together by the colorful threads of her South Asian
heritage and expat experiences. When not writing or dancing, she fools around
on all manner of social media, and loves to connect with her readers. My Last
Love Story is her fourth novel.
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