The most ordinary stories about love sometimes appear extraordinary in the hands of a good creator. Bengaluru-based illustrator Alicia Souza's debut book, Dearest George (Penguin Random House) is a quirky illustrated love letter to her architect husband George Seemon. It's the little moments in the book—like when Souza forces her husband to sit on a mat with her, saying, 'Listen! Come with me...I have to tell you something! I have to show!' and begins to sing, Aladdin's I can show you the world, much to his amusement—that make you chuckle.

Souza, who has quite a fan following on social media for her illustrations, where Seemon and their pets, doggie Charlie-Brown and guinea pig Henry-Oats, are recurring subjects, first thought of the book three years ago, when George and she had a court marriage. "A few months had passed, and many people, including friends and family, still didn't know we were married. I wanted to make an announcement, through a bunch of illustrations, on why I didn't want a wedding. It was a surprise gift for George," she says in a telephone interview. The website she put the sketches up on caught on. "We had thousands of people writing the sweetest of notes to us." When she was approached to write a book, she decided to expand on the original idea. "I didn't tell George about it for the longest time. When he learnt about it, he was embarrassed. But it was a lot of fun. I might seem like a corny person, but that's only in the drawings. Our relationship is actually very regular."