Ulog #2 : Book Review : Let you be my puppet once

A debut work in the Indian book publishing market is most often a novel floating on the lake of romance injected heavily with sentences dripping with blah-able corny love proclamations. That's why I probably stay very far away from them unless heavily recommended.

So it was a delight for me to try out "Let you be my puppet once" by Preetika Mehra.

The book blurb :

Losing their faith in the System, a group of MNC-employed youngsters decide to take revenge on some politicians and businessmen after having suffered at their hands. Their master plan also exposes the connections of the powerful with the rich, of the mafia with politicians and of those who exploited the poor. All this leads to a war. A war that had never happened.

The Chief of Intelligence had never dealt with such brilliant people who were entangling him in multiple versions of events. After a while, he is unable to differentiate between the real and planted evidence. The clock is ticking. The media is on adrenaline.

The Chief is faced with several questions. How did it all happen? Will he be able to solve the case? Can he get the accused politicians acquitted? Should he find an escape for himself amidst the turmoil?

It's time he found the answers!

The tale that Preetika sets out to spin on us is very current and situations that we see around us every day. The central characters, Josh, Vedica, Saima and Karan is you. One of them is you or at least a person you know in your life, making the characters very easy to relate to and connect. A great attempt at writing in the crime/thriller genre, the story moves very smoothly when looked at an eagle's view however character development and transitioning could do a little work.

The plot and the sub-plots are probably the most interesting thing about the book. For people who know me, I have a habit of switching between multiple book while I read, however the sub plots/twists did not let me do that even once and that speaks volumes about the interest that Preetika is able to generate in her readers.

Death is always a painful event. It was interesting to read how Saima dealt with her sister's death and how well it was captured. The story actually begins from this event and leaps ahead quite well.

The narrative, while I found interesting, might be something most readers might not be comfortable with and might be a put off. When I say "readers" here, I mean the casual readers, because that's the market the book does get published in. It could be made a little more gradient so that everyone would be comfortable on this ride.

A gripping book and an interesting take, everyone should give it a read. I would be very happy to know when we have a second book out from Preetika, as she is quite promising.

Rating : 3/5

Pages : 316

Price : 350 Rs

You can pick up the book here

Do check out the Irrevocably Me blog for more reviews.