Trust Me Not by Anikta Verma Dutta

Statistics

Format: Paperback

Length: 384 pages

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Publisher: Jaico Publishing House

Rating: 3/5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book from WritersMelon in exchange for an honest review

I have been reviewing quite a lot of books for WritersMelon and I have been enjoying the process. So when they offered a mystery thriller, I jumped at the chance. The fact that it contained a very political plot made me a little uneasy but I was excited to give it a try.

The Author

Ankita Verma Datta is an Economics graduate from Mumbai University and is trained in advertising communication and marketing at the Xavier Institute of Management/Communication. She has spent more than a decade in the advertising industry, handling a wide range of clients from finance, insurance, education, food industry, and also government sector and political campaigns, before starting her own communications consultancy in 2003. Apart from marketing and advertising, she has interests in various other fields, including curating antique Portugal houses in Goa and ‘hobby-breeding’ the exotic dog breed of Tibetan Mastiffs. An ardent nature and animal lover, she spends her time between Mumbai, Lonavala and Goa.
Trust Me Not is her debut fiction novel and she intends to continue writing socio-political thrillers with current relevance in future too. She writes to evoke and entertain.

Praise for the book-

An excellent account of today’s cut-throat world, told through an intense love story. The complexity of the characters and the story keeps you riveted until the unexpected end. – Madhur Bhandarkar

The Blurb

“Rising corporate star Reeva Rai is offered a prestigious position in a top-notch PR agency. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. But working with Enigmatic Billionaire Kunaal Kabi was not going to be easy. Even as she develops feelings for him, she is determined to prove herself.

But when an activist friend turns to her for help with a real-estate scam, Reeva has to make a high-stakes choice. Can she retain the credibility of her prominent clients while helping hundreds save their homes? As she digs deeper to find solutions, a nefarious scheme unravels with unexpected connections. A no-holds-barred race ensues, blood is drawn and Reeva is trapped in the eye of a political thunderstorm. If she succeeds, powerful people will have much to answer“

The Book

Trust Me Not begins with Reeva Rai, a young corporate girl meeting a handsome and powerful millionaire- Kunaal Kabi. Their chemistry is instantaneous and they hit it off right from the first meeting. It is only later that Reeva finds out that Kunaal is her new boss. Things get more complicated when she finds that Kunaal is emotionally distant and seems to invoke a strong negative response from her co-worker Shalini.

The book is laid thick with references to various political parties like the JBP and the National Progression Party which sound very similar to the political parties that we all know in real life. The dynamic and volatile news anchor Arunabh Roy seems to share a lot of similarities with the anchor that we see everyday on the news even to his nearly identical catch phrase “Our country needs to know”. The handsome, powerful and misunderstood millionaire who loves to have things under control and who is emotionally disturbed and has his friend who is also his psychologist explain the inner workings of his head to his girlfriend reminded me of Fifty Shades of Grey. I wish that the author was more creative and had come up with unique characters and names. I did not like the character of Kunaal with his unpredictability and felt that the character would have benefited from more backstory. The fact that Reeva was so undecided about Kunaal and was stringing poor Nihaal along for no other reason than to avoid Kunaal made me see red. Despite her knowing that Nihaal liked her, she blatantly used him for her selfish means. She also kept going back to Kunaal only to be hurt again and to wallow in misery until he deemed it fit to reappear in her life. I wish she had taken a stronger stand against his indecisiveness and was not so forgiving of him.

The book would have served the same purpose had it been even a hundred pages less than its massive 400 pages. It read as a typical Bollywood movie to me. It was reasonably fast paced and the even though the twists were predictable, it didn’t make me lose interest. The political games where people try to one-up each other and the tactics of top tier businessmen was interesting to read. Trust Me Not was well written and the author seemed to have a very clear idea of what she wanted the story to be.