As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its covers. That’s what happened to me with this book, “The deliberate sinner” by Bhaavna Arora. The book’s front cover featured an image of a lady undressing holding a wedding ring removed on her hand. The back cover writeup was captivating too, it talked of a free-spirited-girl marrying an eligible bachelor until their strong personalities are at odds.
The book premise is good and the author has done a good job for the first book. But I wish I can stop with that.
The book is clinically written, surgical cleanliness. Sadly that’s a perfect recipe for failure in life & this book.
It appears Bhaavna made a list of everything that needs to be in a best seller fiction work and used it in the book. Whether its a female character traveling alone to abroad, wealthy wedding, hot bedroom scene, a loving grandfather in deathbed, high society parents caring more for their social status than their daughter, adultery, a kidnap sequence, Mumbai social scene, Delhi high circle and fashion industry, its all there in the book. Unfortunately most of these feel forced into the story, not having them would have helped us to enjoy what could have been a great story.
The book appears to be a manifestation of author’s eagerness to say everything she has to say in one book. I feel confused in most of the scenes why something happens or talked about. Rihana’s helper/driver character, why is he present in the story?. A dog for Rihana is force fitted into the story so that Rihana on its death can have an emotional romantic encounter with her best friend Raj. Why should Rihana go to Mumbai, live with his paternal uncle and why should her Uncle be a widower?. The kidnap near Delhi starts of well and gets you captivated but it dragged a bit too much which makes you guess what’s really happening.
Till the last chapters, the author stays away from portraying anything bad/sinister with the husband (Veer) or his parents. They are not shown as bad people. Veer comes across as a normal guy working hard to succeed in his business. In life there is no clear black or white in people and that makes his character interesting. But suddenly at the end, an affair is introduced to push veer’s character into dark side and then all the build up charm in that storyline is lost.
Why does Rihana always fall for physical attraction, whether it is Veer doing 100 laps in swimming pool or when she decides to have an affair why it has to be a man in uniform?. There are many questions like this in my head. If I think anymore on this, my wife is going to kick me out of bed for sure.