‘The Scent of Fallen Stars’: The prose shines with possibilities but the plot does not quite sparkle

The love story is one of the oldest forms of storytelling. The quests and wars, the poisoned apples and the cursed spindles, the faces that launched a thousand ships, the princesses that wed statues at swayamvars, the wives who brought their husbands back from the dead, the queens who gave up their royal robes for tree bark and exile, have all been love stories at varied slants.

A good love story, one that firmly holds the reader’s attention in its grasp even as it balances something familiar with something new, is also one of the most difficult things to write. This is where Aishwarya Jha’s debut novel, The Scent of Fallen Stars, runs into its biggest challenge. It is a love story that hinges on a quest, as it traverses two timelines, separated by a little over two decades. Aria, a UK citizen, visiting India in 2018 to find her mother, has her story intersect with that of Will Rhodes, an ex-pat who lands in India just as spring begins to slide into the searing summer of 1995, and, soon after, falls in love with an enigmatic young woman, Leela. As the rules of romance dictate, Will’s love is unrequited, steady, and unselfish....

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