White Noise by Shruti Upadhaya

You know when someone blindfolds you and and puts this yum-smelling dish in front of you and you need to taste it and keep guessing the elements and the name of the dish. Well, White Noise was such a read for me. I dived into this book blindfolded because nothing on the cover (title, blurb, genre) gives away the story and to be honest, this new experience was quite enthralling. I kept guessing whether this book is a thriller or a science fiction or a murder mystery. Turns out, it is none of these. Shruti Upadhaya’s debut is a convoluted and twisted romance thriller and is something so mysterious that makes you second guess every chapter in the book.

The book is sub-divided into three parts namely Me, Her and Him and deals with three important characters. And let me take this moment to appreciate Upadhaya’s brilliant character sketch. Each character in the book is so well-written that you are bound to identify with their flaws and you sort of start empathising with them. The description of the protagonist’s mental state was excellently done and so minutely taken care of that you feel like you know her like the back of your hand. The book deals with chronic depression and mental health issues which is slowly becoming extremely common among the millenials and needs to be handled carefully. I absolutely loved how the author was not outwardly sympathetic towards the issue, instead managed to give us a glimpse into the world of a person suffering from depression and anxiety.

What to expect :-

Excellent characterisation

Writing that equally reminds you of a starry cloudless night as well as a rainy and gloomy morning.

Unusual and rarely tapped into genre.

A book that drums out all the other elements around you and make you focus into the story much like White Noise does. (Took me 2 hours to finish this one)

However ..

I was highly disappointed with the ending. A book with such a promising start and beautiful writing deserved a less cliched ending. It was a little hurried and careless and it kind of broke my heart to watch the climax fall so badly.

I would recommend ..

if you are looking for something unusual to read and enjoy thought-provoking writing, then be sure to pick this book up.

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Publisher : Bee Books

Pages : 143

Rating : 3.5 / 5

You can buy the book here.

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