#BlogTour ‘The Girl and the Goddess’ by Nikita Gill

About the book…

Bestselling poet, writer, and Instagram sensation Nikita Gill returns with a collection of poetry and prose exploring Hindu mythology and legend.

Let her be a little less human, a little more divine
Give her heart armor so it doesn’t break as easily as mine

Meet Paro. A girl with a strong will, a full heart, and much to learn. Born into a family reeling from the ruptures of Partition in India, we follow her as she crosses the precarious lines between childhood, teenage discovery, and realizing her adult self. In the process, Paro must confront fear, desire and the darkest parts of herself in the search for meaning and, ultimately, empowerment.

Nikita Gill’s vivid poetry and beautiful illustrations have captured hearts and imaginations–but in The Girl and the Goddess, she offers us her most personal and deeply felt writing to date: an intimate coming-of-age story told in linked poems that offers a look into the Hindu mythology and rich cultural influences that helped her become the woman she is today.

All my thanks go to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Ebury Publishing for the blogtour invite and gifted review copy, of the wondrous ‘The Girl and the Goddess’ which is out now. It is hard, and near impossible, to encapsulate the feelings evinced by the journey a reader takes through poems and prose as they travel alongside Paro,from before she is born to adulthood.

Her journey is accompanied by the tales whispered to her by the Goddess who visits her 9 times. She tells these stories as guiding lights on the path that Paro takes to becoming herself, a unique individual weighed down with expectation of her family, history and the myths of the Hindu religion. Through them she discovers her strength, her agency and what makes her, her.The life lessons she learns, as she grows, from her family and her surroundings which are uprooted from Kashmir to Delhi after Partition, is incredible.

In acknowledging her past, her future is re-written in the strength running through her- fuelled by myths, she creates her own as a woman in a world which sees the feminine as something to be absorbed, subsumed and exist as a carrier of the next generation. It is a journey both into, and outside of herself to connect with a world which is both welcoming and repulsing. It is through the pain, the growth, the situations outside of her control that she learns how to be at peace with her feelings, her journey and how to tell stories.

It leaves you with the desire to know so much more about the mythologies which Nikita Gill introduces in a voice which is uniquely hers,it is fierce,and unashamedly feminist.As peaceful as it is warriorlike, soothing as it is unsettling, as heartrending as it is heart mending, this is a wonderful, transcendant experience which will leave you breathless and hungry for more.

Some books find you at exactly the time that you need them, even if you didn’t have a concious awareness of that fact. This is one of them. Treasure it, recommend it, buy it for your friends and family and read it aloud. Every word deserves to be savoured.

About the author…

Nikita Gill is a Indian Sikh writer brought up in Gurugram, Haryana in India. In her mid twenties, she immigrated to the South of England and worked as a carer for many years. She enjoys creating paintings, poems, stories, photos, illustrations and other soft, positive things. Her work has appeared in Literary Orphans, Agave Magazine, Gravel Literary Journal, Monkeybicycle, Foliate Oak, MusePiePress, Dying Dahlia Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Eunoia Review, Corvus Review, After The Pause and elsewhere.

With a huge online following, her words have captivated hearts and minds all over the world. Nikita is an
ambassador for National Poetry Day and is a regular speaker at literary events. Her previous works include ‘Fierce Fairytales’Poetry and ‘Great Goddesses’. The Girl and The Goddess is her first novel.

Links-https://meanwhilepoetry.tumblr.com/

Twitter @nktgill @RandomTTours @EburyPublishing