It Was Perfect by Abhineet Garg Book Review
It Was Perfect: The Story of an Artist by Abhineet Garg is one of those rare reads that compiles so many emotions in a single thread, with its intense, emotionally charged, and impossible to forget storyline that I didn’t just read this book—I lived it.
Ananya Pandit is a character who got under my skin in ways I didn’t expect. She’s not easy to love, but you can’t look away from her. There’s something magnetic about her—her obsession with perfection, her vulnerability beneath all that ambition, her quiet unraveling. From the very first chapter, I felt like I was walking beside her—through the sweat, the pain, the applause, and eventually, the shadows creeping in.
The psychological layering in this story is absolutely stunning. The way Garg plays with perception—blurring reality and imagination—is so seamless, so unsettling, it kept me constantly on edge. Alisha, especially at certain moments, left me with chills. Is she real? Is she a hallucination? Or is she something far more symbolic—a mirror of Ananya’s fractured soul? That ambiguity in some parts is what makes this novel so hauntingly powerful.
And the writing—oh, the writing. It’s poetic and raw all at once. Some passages made me pause just to take them in. The imagery is seared into my memory: satin ribbon soaked in sweat, blo%d smudged across a stage floor, the shattering of a mirror, the echo of applause that feels more like a ghost than a triumph.
And that final moment—when Ananya says, “It was perfect”—it just broke me. It’s such a quiet line, but it carries the weight of everything the story has built toward. It’s not just an ending—it’s a goodbye. A farewell to a life that burned too brightly and too briefly.
This book is heavy. It’s dark. But it’s also breathtakingly beautiful. It’s one of those rare stories that lingers inside you long after you’ve finished it, whispering fragments back to you when you least expect it.
Long story short, I think this book is ~ Raw, lyrical, and unforgettable—a novel that leaves a mark on your soul. If you’ve ever chased a dream to the edge of madness or felt the ache of wanting to be more than humanly possible, this story will speak to you in ways you won’t be able to explain—but you’ll feel it, deeply.
