Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Deviants by Santanu Battacharya

Blurb from Goodreads

Vivaan, a teenager in India’s silicon plateau, has discovered love on his smartphone. Intoxicating, boundary-breaking love. His parents know he is gay, and their support is something Vivaan can count on, but they don’t know what exactly their son gets up to in the online world.

For his uncle, born thirty years earlier, things were very different. Mambro’s life changed forever when he fell for a male classmate at a time, and in a country, where the persecution of gay people was rife under a colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality.

And before that was Mambro’s uncle Sukumar, a young man hopelessly in love with another young man, but forced by social taboos to keep their relationship a secret at all costs. Sukumar would never live the life he yearned for, but his story would ignite and inspire his nephew and grand-nephew after him.

Bold and bracing, intimate and heartbreaking, Deviants examines the histories we inherit and the legacies we leave behind.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Well, technically it should be “Happy Tuesday everyone!” Just like that, we are down three weeks into 2025. How has the new year been so far? I hope that 2025 is showering everyone with positive news and blessings. I hope everyone is able to pick up their energies because, as we all know it, life must still go on. There is still a long way ahead of us but it seems that January is moving quicker this year than it did in the previous two years; I am not seeing those ubiquitous memes about January being two months long. LOL. Nevertheless, I hope everyone started the work week on the right note. I hope you all had a good start to the workweek. I hope everyone makes it through the week. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit, not only this week but for the rest of the year.

Despite the new year, some things never change. As has been customary, I am kicking off the blogging week with a fresh Goodreads Monday update; yes, Monday. This is my second update for the year. With the new year comes new goals and resolutions. For this year, I have quite some lofty reading goals. For one, I have already set my reading goal to 100 despite historically initially setting it at a more conservative level. I guess I want to challenge myself and maintain the reading momentum I built in the past three years. I also plan to read more translated works to reduce the gap between books originally published in English and translated literary works.

Anyway, back to what this weekly bookish meme is about. As mentioned, the start of the year comes with reading goals. As such, the book I am featuring this week is a book that is part of a reading goal. Like the featured books in the past two weeks’ Goodreads Monday updates, Santanu Bhattacharya’s Deviants is part of my 2025 Top 10 Book I Look Forward To. The list is usually comprised of writers whose oeuvres I have not explored before. Most of them are writers who I have not encountered before the ongoing year. This is the case for the Indian-born writer who I only came across while researching for books to include to my 2025 Top 10 Books I Look Forward To List. His sophomore novel – his debut novel, One Small Voice, was published in 2023- is a familiar presence in similar lists. It did not take much to convince me to include the book to my own list.

Interestingly, the first three books I featured in this weekly update this year share similarities. Baalu Girma’s Oromay, Tash Aw’s The South, and Deviants transport the readers to the past. This is a plus for me already. However, Deviants commences in the present before moving to the past. In a way, it explores a similar theme as The South: homosexual love. I am looking forward to what all of these books have to offer. Further, what makes both books compelling are the cultural settings. I am aware of the Indian hijra but I believe that it is not applicable to all, especially considering the diversity existing in the subcontinent. Deviants is about to be released on February 13. For now, I just hope I get to obtain a copy of the book without having to wait for long. How was your Monday, Tuesday rather? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!