So all those who are aware of Chetan Bhagat’s works would know what to expect when you pick up one of his books. Yes, it will have a love sick puppy angle, it will be about students or alumni of IIT or IIM, and one of the main characters would be narrating the story to the author himself.
Well…Mr. Bhagat lives up to all these expectations in this one.
To begin with, it isn’t a bad story all together. There is a love angle, a forbidden love angle, a betrayal in love angle and a killed by love angle. In the very beginning, the main character, while narrating his story to the author, says that this story is not a love story and it is different from the stories he writes about. Soon you feel that this in fact is not so true. There is most definitely a love story, just that it runs in retrospect. Nevertheless, regular readers of Chetan Bhagat’s novels don’t really pick up his books hoping for a nail biting thriller, so it is not like they’ll be disappointed when they don’t find one.
The plot revolves around Keshav, an IIT graduate quite sick of his job as a coaching teacher, going out on a quest for the killer of his ex-girlfriend. It is inlaid with some light humour that Indian’s might find relatable and funny, a sub plot about undying friendship between Keshav and his roommate which makes people wonder if they may in fact be gay, and characters transforming from tuition teachers who couldn’t even tell their boss that he sucks, to people who chase terrorists.
Overall, the pace of the novel is steady. The suspense seems too stretched with the suspicion landing on almost each and every character introduced in the book. And some extremely sudden twists and insane detective strategies. After ‘One Indian Girl’ which I found extremely humorous and full of real emotions, ‘The Girl in Room 105’ is quite a let-down. If you are a Chetan Bhagat fan, well…then would it really matter what I say? But if you are going to read this author’s works for the first time, go for ‘One Indian Girl’ or his previous novels.
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