Book Review: When the Signal Turns Red

Synopsis:

Girish and Prajakta are in love. Very soon Girish will be joining the numero uno IT company of the country. He prepares himself by buying expensive clothes and other accessories he had always dreamed of. He and Prajakta have together planned to build on a good bank balance and then meet each other’s families to talk about marriage, probably after a year or two. Unexpectedly, the families get involved before Girish can join the IT Company. Against all odds, the couple manages to convince their family and an engagement date is fixed. But destiny has other things in mind. A global catastrophe mars their plan which leads to the engagement getting annulled.

Will Girish find a way out of his predicament? Will he ultimately win Prajakta’s hand or will he move on in life, learning to live without her?

My Review:

I received this book as a review copy from the author. It is the first publicized work of the author who happens to be an IT professional. The story revolves around two love-struck engineering graduates and how the turbulent financial scenario plays spoilsport in their lives.

There isn’t anything complex in the narration. It’s a light read which you can finish in a few hours. The language is very simple and highly relatable to the youth. The author, being an IT professional himself, has dealt with the aftermath of the financial crisis in a commendable manner as it has come out very well in the book. Even the few romantic portions involving the protagonists are devoid of any melodrama and it has been narrated in a way that is believable.

Being the author’s debut work, there were a lot of areas that I felt the author could have written better. We know that Girish & Prajakta are in love, but since we have no idea about how they fell in love or any backstory, we don’t have an emotional connect with them. This itself will make the reader disassociate with the characters. I also felt that addressing the parents as Mr. & Mrs. Chitre and the same for Girsh’s parents was very odd. By doing so, the writer has distanced these characters from the reader’s mind. The author also needs to work on his writing skills a lot more as I found a lot of phrases repeating itself throughout the story. The most unbelievable part was the ending, which I felt, was written in a hurry. The reasoning for the ending was very clichéd and the narration was very cinematic. It gives a feeling that the author lost the plot or didn’t know how to finish the story.

The author had a good plot and I believe that the narration began well but lost steam after the first few pages. The author could have dwelt into the lives of the Khedekar & Chitre households a bit more. The author also needs to work a lot on the characterization as all the characters lacked depth and conviction.

It is definitely not a bad book but it could have been a great book had the author taken care of the minute details.

MY RATING: 2/5