The book jangshersingh.com by Vishal Bhatia was a welcome break for me after reading three non-fiction books all written by celebrities like Twinkle Khanna, Shilpa Shetty and Sonali Bendre in a row. Jangshersingh.com is the debut novel by Vishal Bhatia. It’s a tennis sports thriller. Well in a cricket crazy country where movies and books are based on cricket, Tennis was a novel idea by the first time author Vishal Bhatia.
The story is about two men Aman and Yug who goes to Melbourne to watch Australian Open but are robbed on their way of their Supercar Audi Flames. The rest of the story is about how they retrieve the car and makes a fortune by setting up a e-commerce website of a wildcard entrant Jangsher Singh. Well this is in nutshell the blurb of the book which I have written. It sounds interesting. Doesn’t give away much.
But the summary which is written at the back of the book gives away the entire storyline. This makes the novel very predictable. I know what will be coming next in the story line. The author has tried hard to keep the story line interesting and page turner by bringing in many twist in between but none were impressive enough to infuse life into tale. In other words the twist which the author introduced weren’t weaved well and has no impact on the outcome of the story. Even without them the end would have remain the same.
The tennis matches were all well written but were not something which will pump up my adrenaline and push to the corner of the seat seeking what will happen next. The author might have done a lot of tennis watching to give the feeling of real matches. But unlike Jangsher Singh who being a rookie, in the book of course, played like a seasoned player, Vishal Bhattia is still a newborn baby in the world of writing. The thrill was missing from the matches. Narrative and description are the book’s weak point. There were hardly any in the book and whatever is there are not enough to create an aura which is needed for the reader to dive in and live it till they finish the book. The story telling is mainly through dialogues and that too were not so engaging to read.
It has become a trend these days that if the book is written with youth age in mind then authors becomes free to use ‘F’ words at will. In this book there won’t be a single page without the use of slang words or ‘F’ words. Why author’s these days doesn’t inhibit in using such words when we clearly doesn’t want our children to use these words in their conversation frequently and without discretion. Also the proofreading was not done properly so one could discover a few grammatical and spelling errors.
The end of the book was very abrupt. Gives a feeling that the author was in hurry to finish off and has left on the readers to use their own imaginations for rest of the things. There were so many dramas in Jangsher Singh’s life during the tournament but none actually find a suitable answer or end. The author swept all the mess in his life under the carpet and end it with it.
Also nothing much was written about the website jangshersingh.com after it was index in the Google. It would have been an interesting read. How Yug and Aman were managing the e-commerce site out of no where.
The Verdict- The book is a average read.
