Book Review- The Girl In Room 105 by Chetan Bhagat

The Girl In Room 105

Writing a review for a chetan bhagat novel seems so superfluous. Reviews be damned, the man sells books and you can’t argue with success like that. Even if he is not India’s best-selling author, which he claimed once and rightly belongs to Jeffrey archer, he still sells enough books to come in the top 3 of best-selling authors in india. So the advent of any new book by chetan baghat becomes a must read event as everyone else in all the social media channels- books related- seem to be discussing it and nothing else for weeks on end. So in an act of supreme self-flagellation I downloaded his latest novel the girl in room 105 and started to read it with my usual trepidation when it’s a chetan bhagat book.

The story is nothing new. If you are looking for clichés- it’s all here, chetan bhagat doesn’t disappoint. A hindu man from a rss family falling in love with a muslim girl from Kashmir with separatist tendencies? Check. Both hero and heroine from IIT delhi? One an ex-iit’ian and the other a current iit’ian? Check. Entrance preparation for iit coaching centre where loser hero works? Check.  A north Indian hero who is quite romantic but not successful financially in contrast to a south Indian villain who has no romantic streak in him but plenty of money? Check. A sidekick who seems less than bright when compared to the hero but has a heart of gold? Circuit check. Failed romance, alcohol binge, abusing exes? Check. If you have read the newspapers on all the burning issues in recent times, rest assured bhagat has touched all of them in one way or the other in this book, so much so that it seems a compilation of the headlines of the past six months or so written in an easy to read form

For those familiar with him, Chetan bhagat doesn’t tax himself by writing new storylines. He simply rewrites the same story with newly named characters and in a way it’s comforting for you never have the anxiety of worrying about what the characters are going to do or how the story is going to end as you have read it all before and can predict at the start of the book how it’s going to turn out in the end. And to be frank the only way to summarize this book is – its everything you imagined it to be, no surprises here. If you are going to buy it, whatever I say is not going to change your mind is it? And if you are not going to buy it- please don’t.