Book Review : When you were Betrayed by Shrehya Taneja

Title : When you were betrayed

Author : Shrehya Taneja

Genre : Literary Fiction

Pages : 118

I received this Review Copy from Half Baked Beans in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Half Baked Beans and Book Marketing Consultant Tanvi Jain!!

Blurb

Delhi, 1990’s: The Bhalla family heading a business empire descends into chaos. Struggling to fight both the external and the internal skeletons in their closet, Samrat begins losing his grip on reality. With villains galore in his universe having their own agenda, he struggles to battle his demons. His fierce mother’s warning echoes in his ear – bees tend to swarm wherever there is a drop of honey

Present: The investigator delves into the history of the buried past to put her present to right. A memoir that connects the journey between two eras and people as the investigator tries to piece together a world that existed before her traversing different timelines. Histories can be re-written.

The fictional account reflects the perspectives of various characters as the suspense of the plot unravels.

Review

The story revolves around a typically well-off Business family in India and it focuses on what leads to the fall of the Business Empire built by Bhalla, the patriarchy of the family. Every character’s side of the story and their feeling and situations are explained meticulously through different generations and timelines in the book.

Despite approaching the story from different angles and perspectives all the details written on the book felt insufficient and irrelevant. First of all, the way the story has been narrated wasn’t very clear, the narrative style was ultimately confusing and tedious. It would take the readers a lot of time and multiple re-reads to understand what is being stated in the book. And that wasn’t a very pleasant experience to gain from a book.

The book was constantly a mixture of third person perspective narration and first person narration. The jump from one perspective to another wasn’t smooth and wasn’t written systematically. So it made the whole reading process difficult and incomprehensible. Till the very end the author failed to tell who the narrator was and there was no good and genuine introduction to the protagonist which kept the readers from connecting with the book and characters at a personal level.

There were a couple of side characters here and there and none of them was given a proper formal introduction. For that matter even the lead characters wasn’t given an apt introduction and it took so much effort and time to understand who was who and who the author was talking about in a particular scene. The writing style of the book was tiring and it wasn’t smooth or coherent. It is pretty clear the author has extensive knowledge with English Literature and her writing conveys that but the way the book was carried forward and presented was tad to complex for normal audience.

Throughout the book the author says, it was an investigative novel where the writer tries to find out the mystery behind the fall of the Business Empire of Bhalla. And promises for some suspenseful revelation but nothing of that sort happened and it was quite disappointing.

The whole point of this book was unfathomable and too very complicated for my understanding. There were instances where the book had portrayed the typical Indian household scenarios into the book which gave a relatable everyday touch to it. But the regular Saas-Bahu drama (mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) was too dramatic and made it more like an afternoon time Indian soap opera.

The way the matriarch of the family gives advice to the family was quite interesting. I liked the way she compared everything with Bee hive was kind of refreshing and good to read. All the characters had the potential to be shown from a wonderful light but somehow they all lack it and felt very incomplete.

My Views

It was clear the author was experimenting something new and novel but the way it written and presented wasn’t so very enchanting. And this book was beyond my capacity of understanding and so I did not completely enjoy the reading journey.

As the author told in the book about some other book, it was an unpleasant reading experience, I couldn’t make head or tail out of it, I felt the same with this book. I was totally betrayed by When you were betrayed.

This book didn’t work for me but it might work for you. Read the blurb and if you’re interested go ahead with it. After all every reader is different and all their tastes are different. So give it a chance if it interests you!!

My rating for this book would be 2 out of 5 stars

Check out the book here!!

Happy Reading Folks!!!

~ Meenu