Blurb View: 

He was a bestseller… She wanted him to make her one.

Paperback king, Aditya Kapoor’s life is straight out of a modern man’s fantasy. His literary stardom is perfectly balanced by a loving wife and a spectacular career. With everything he touches turning to gold, Aditya is on a winning streak.

Shreya Kaushik is a student with a heart full of ambition. Young, beautiful, and reckless, Shreya speaks her mind and obsessively chases after what she wants. And what she wants is to be a bestselling author.

What happens when their worlds collide? Is it possible to love two people at the same time? Can real ambition come in the way of blind passion? Can trust once broken, be regained?

Master storyteller Ravi Subramanian, delves into the glitzy world of bestsellers and uncovers a risky dalliance between a superstar novelist and his alluring protégé.

The Bestseller She Wrote is a combustible cocktail of love, betrayal and redemption.

Review: 

What do you expect when you pick up an overtly hyped book for review? Obviously, the best. When a bestseller author like Ravi Subramanian shifts gear from banking/finance/gaming to supposedly romance as a genre, readers have to be eager to know how he fares. With that much anticipation, I too wanted to know how differently or similarly he wrote this book. Romance-thrillers are picking up pace slowly in India and it’s not darn easy to balance both.

As I’m sure most of the readers are acquainted with the plot or blurb, the story is about an author (and a banker, there’s no respite from those jargon here too) and a fan who plots a diabolical scheme. Let me not get into spoilers, rather try the character sketch of the main characters. ‘Aditya Kapoor’ has drawn inspiration from a certain bestseller author, whom everyone loves. There are very blatant bits taken from his life to build the character, either with his permission or in plain humour. Shreya Kaushik is the one who probably gets more attention in the book as the ‘fan’ who becomes much more than that. I liked the way her character is shown evolving from her IIM days and the plot she schemes.

Other important characters like Aditya’s wife Maya and his best friend Sanjiv needed a little more attention in my opinion. Maya contracts Ebola in Paris and gets her treatment in Mumbai, but the events occur in very quick succession without much elaboration. The twists, though predictable, come later and the anti-climax is a Feluda-ish one, where all of them sit in a room and are confronted by Aditya. The slightly erotic scenes seem a bit pushy and coerced. What irked me the most is the erratic narration. The dialogues are short and curt, the narrative lacks a gel that would bind it together. I had kind of liked the author’s previous book as it was pacy and pretty coherent. Had expected similar stuff this time, but couldn’t be happy.

With a plot that had a base, it could have been much more and truly a bestseller. If this is a one off experiment from the author in this genre, hope he’ll be back to where he excelled with his previous books. Recommended for young readers, go find out what works behind writing and publishing.

My Rating: 3/5

About the Author:

Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, has spent two decades working his way up the ladder of power in the amazingly exciting and adrenaline-pumping world of global banks in India. It is but natural that his stories are set against the backdrop of the financial services industry. In 2008, his debut novel, If God Was a Banker, won the Golden Quill Reader’s Choice Award. He won the Economist Crossword Book Award in 2012 for The Incredible Banker and the Crossword Book Award in 2013 for The Bankster. His most recent novel is Bankerupt. He lives in Mumbai with his wife, Dharini and daughter, Anusha.

Book Details: 

Language: English,  Genre: Fiction/Contemporary

Author(s): Ravi Subramanian

Publisher: Westland Books, Year Published: October 2015

Binding: Paperback, Edition: First, Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 978-9385152382 , ISBN-10: 9385152386

 

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