Book Review – Trust Me Not by Ankita Verma Datta

 

I just finished reading ‘Trust me not’ and in spite of being on family vacation, I felt strong compulsion to write about this fantastic read.

When it comes to thriller, I generally tend to stick with authors like Jeffery Archer or perhaps Sidney Sheldon. Somehow, I got intuition for this novel when I first saw the title. I accept that the title is pretty simple but I decided to give my gut a chance. I started reading this novel without even glancing the backside blurb or any other review.

And after finishing the novel from cover to cover in single sitting I am glad that I trusted my instincts. With firm plot and fast pace storyline, ‘Trust me not’ glided smoothly in my imaginative universe. Crisp and detailed character sketch helped me visualize every single character. Viola! I was not reading novel but watching enthralling movie.

Story is setup in contemporary Indian society with characters ranging from mass media, politics, real estate, journalism and pretty much every front which interest Indian reader. One interesting trick used by the author is changing Point-Of-View of characters couple of times. While reading, whenever I felt that I should also know what other person in the scene is feeling, I found change in narration on the very next page. Multiple protagonists give another dimension to the novel altogether, avoiding the plot holes and keeping the pace of the story intact.

I will not summarize the story here. I believe that’s spoilsport and unjust for the readers. What I will do is to highlight another strong reason to read ‘Trust me Not’. For me, the best part of the novel was the cohesiveness of the story. No fragmented subplots, no useless narration, multiple threads will appear throughout the chapters but in the end everything binds together to create strong and perfect saga of love, hatred, confusion, conspiracy, blood and honor.

A review is never complete without mentioning cons of the novel and I will not say that there were none. Only drawback I came across was the predictability of some of the events happened in the novel. Although, one amazing twist at the end compensated it well.

Before concluding this review, I would also like to appreciate genuine effort made by the author of this novel – Ankita. I never read such a mature novel by first time author. I actually went to an extent to find out if she authored something before this novel. What I infer is that she used her forte to formulate the idea of the novel and my strong guess is that she have quiver full of stories which we will read in future. She did a marvelous job in every aspect of quality writing. With perfect choice of words and lucid style she did justice to every character of the novel and to the readers as well.

I am not boasting anything but if I go by my gut feeling which compelled me to read this novel at the first place. We found a promising author who can bring stories like Archer or Sheldon.