Two stars: It was ok.
The book is not bad. It is a decent one time read. But the entire onus of making a thriller/murder mystery a good one is on the climax, which failed to satisfy me. The end comes as a surprise, and I do not say that in a good way.
The story revolves around the murder of Ramola, a yesteryear's star, who decided to ruffle feathers of a bunch of (crooks) people from her extremely dramatic and tabloid-worthy past by announcing her autobiography in their presence on her 40th birthday.
I'll go over the things that worked for me first:
1. The plot: It is simple yet interesting. The locked-room whodunit mystery with a bunch of characters related to the victim in convoluted ways added a flavour of drama to the book, and I quite liked it.
2. The treatment of characters: Most of the characters, in my opinion, were well sketched. I am particularly happy with the author's decision of placing the murder much after the initial character-building of the book has taken place. The clever placement gives the reader an insight to the protagonist's relationship with the various other characters, both in the present time as well as throwing light on the dynamics of their shared past.
3. The flow: The language was mostly flowy and the book seemed to move as one fluid and racy narrative, even though there were plenty of characters to be dealt with, each having an independent backgrounds. (I will come to the negatives later.)
4. The build-up/suspense: When everyone has a motive, the whodunit becomes even more gripping. This book was definitely one of those that kept you on your toes (albeit only till the climax is revealed).
What did not work for me:
1. The climax: Big disappointment. (view spoiler)
2. The editing: I am extremely disappointed to report that like most Indian authors (I detest stereotyping but it holds true), even this book has not been edited properly. Problems with formatting, grammar, spacing - the book is riddled with one at least every ten pages. Being published by Harper Black, I expected the editing team to do a better job.
3. Use of large words: Random big words, not used colloquially, are dropped in dialogues for no good reason. I am not a fan of big-word dropping in an otherwise simply written book. Cankerous, shindig, kowtow? Not my idea of sprucing up a narrative.
4. Use of brackets: To expand acronyms, to explain some remark - they just seemed very ill-placed. A dialogue is not spoken in brackets. I don't see why it should be written in that way either.
Recommended for the writing, not for the suspense.
Just about alright.
(This book could have easily been a 4-4.5 star for me had the climax managed to excite me even a tad bit.)
*****
Find out more about this book here.
Follow my reviews here.
Follow my bookstagram here.
The book is not bad. It is a decent one time read. But the entire onus of making a thriller/murder mystery a good one is on the climax, which failed to satisfy me. The end comes as a surprise, and I do not say that in a good way.
The story revolves around the murder of Ramola, a yesteryear's star, who decided to ruffle feathers of a bunch of (crooks) people from her extremely dramatic and tabloid-worthy past by announcing her autobiography in their presence on her 40th birthday.
I'll go over the things that worked for me first:
1. The plot: It is simple yet interesting. The locked-room whodunit mystery with a bunch of characters related to the victim in convoluted ways added a flavour of drama to the book, and I quite liked it.
2. The treatment of characters: Most of the characters, in my opinion, were well sketched. I am particularly happy with the author's decision of placing the murder much after the initial character-building of the book has taken place. The clever placement gives the reader an insight to the protagonist's relationship with the various other characters, both in the present time as well as throwing light on the dynamics of their shared past.
3. The flow: The language was mostly flowy and the book seemed to move as one fluid and racy narrative, even though there were plenty of characters to be dealt with, each having an independent backgrounds. (I will come to the negatives later.)
4. The build-up/suspense: When everyone has a motive, the whodunit becomes even more gripping. This book was definitely one of those that kept you on your toes (albeit only till the climax is revealed).
What did not work for me:
1. The climax: Big disappointment. (view spoiler)
2. The editing: I am extremely disappointed to report that like most Indian authors (I detest stereotyping but it holds true), even this book has not been edited properly. Problems with formatting, grammar, spacing - the book is riddled with one at least every ten pages. Being published by Harper Black, I expected the editing team to do a better job.
3. Use of large words: Random big words, not used colloquially, are dropped in dialogues for no good reason. I am not a fan of big-word dropping in an otherwise simply written book. Cankerous, shindig, kowtow? Not my idea of sprucing up a narrative.
4. Use of brackets: To expand acronyms, to explain some remark - they just seemed very ill-placed. A dialogue is not spoken in brackets. I don't see why it should be written in that way either.
Recommended for the writing, not for the suspense.
Just about alright.
(This book could have easily been a 4-4.5 star for me had the climax managed to excite me even a tad bit.)
*****
Find out more about this book here.
Follow my reviews here.
Follow my bookstagram here.
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