The Unwanted Shadow by Bhaskarrya Deka
Title : The Unwanted Shadow
Author : Bhaskarrya Deka
I won this book as a part of giveaway on Goodreads and I’m happy to be reviewing it. This book is written by a young debutante author and considering that Mr. Deka has done quite a good job.
It is a very short book of roughly about 170 pages and can be read in one goal. The theme of the book changes from fiction to thriller to psychology to murder mystery all too fast. I am personally not a fan of these shifting genres and I would like it if they are part of different books and not stuffed all into one.
The book starts of with the story of Mohan who is from a small town in Assam who dreams big of going to Delhi for his further studies. The first half of the book is quite slow paced defining the intricate details of Mohan’s parents and siblings. Later it describes his student life and love story woven around the college premises and this doesn’t contribute much to the larger scheme of things. Also he meets his wife and then everything moves on frequently when suddenly there is a murder and Mohan moves to prison. The prison life is described in detail here. Yes! The theme keeps shifting like crazy and then Mohan is put into an infirmary where again lives of mentally affected people are given. There are two murders in the story. The intention behind the first one is quite convincing. But the second one was a little too much to digest. The plot failed to impress me in that part.
The cover page looks quite interesting and in the course of the story you realize the importance of two people in the book and the title seems just apt. If a Bollywood movie can be made out of this book, I can totally imagine Salman Khan playing such a kind of saviour like role. But for a debutante author, I appreciate him taking the plunnge to describe issue like child abuse in his first novel. The language used in the book is better than most of the IIT, IIM pass-out authors and you can surely spare a day for readng this out. I would give it a 3 on 5 stars for the effort of the author in his first book.
Rating: 3/5(You can surely give it a chance but you won’t miss out on anything if you skip it.)
