So this book released with much anticipation and finally I got a copy of it I grabbed it from the stores shelf to ensure I get a copy of it. Little did I know they were going to stay there for long.
So is it that bad? Yes to some extent. I know it is disappointing but its the fact. There is nothing cool about this one. The characters are inspired from his earlier books "Five point someone" and "One night" Same ol' ordinary guy(in this one it's Govind patel) his cool Friend Ishaan(ryan in five point) and a dumb guy "omi" a character which is very much similar to 'Alok" from his first book. The first phase of the book is simply boring and will take you back to the memories of his first two books on how the three guys have fun and the times they met and so on, and also the introduction of the city(Ahmadabad) is very short and non-descriptive, surely the author does not pick up the nerves of the spirit of small towns as he had captured the magic of the "II T's" and the "call centre's" this is where the main drawback of this book is there is nothing of small town in this small town story, India is off course changing but the small town mentality is surely not covered in this one and there is too much of pointless cricket in it(may be it seems too much because of the ongoing IPL series)tough the book have been better without it,as cricket has no important role to play in this small town story I guess it's just introduced hoping to cash on the cricket love of Indian people but it goes in vain.. After our protagonist makes his first mistake(the earthquake part)it lacks emotions, but from that point the plot moves on then reading is made fun as MR.Bhagat again enters his favourite "love angle" and the way he handles such issues have always being a favourite with us all. But this fun does not stay long as the author again goes into the dark phase of politics and religion and that is told in an uninteresting way.Then the trip to Australia is like a yash raj movie where the screen couple just escape to any foreign locations for their dance sequences surely there is no dance in here, and the reason for the kid declining the Australian citizenship is not understood if he declined it out of patriotism or any other one? Till the time the second mistake happens, you already pray for the book to end soon. And then again the "Five point phase" romantic moments between the protagonist and his best Friends sister, and then it's the final take(thank god!) Yes the riots and then there happens the third mistakes. The story is nothing you have never heard of it's the same one with all the masala of the Hindi movie and the way the sensitive issue of religion and riots is handled in the book is far from real and the para' in which the author describes the riots from the bank's roof is straight away a seen from Deepa Mehta's "1947-Earth". I surely see why MR.Bhagat is moving to bollywood because inspiration is the base of this Indian film industry. I can say that if the protagonist made three mistakes in the book I made a fourth mistake by reading it! So if you are a die hard "CHETAN BHAGAT" fan you'll surely be disappointed by this one, but I know he'll come up with something interesting the next time.
This is an average book and it'll be getting not more than "two and a half" star out of five.
