Book Review-Right Fit Wrong Shoe by Varsha Dixit

Title: Right Fit Wrong Shoe

Author: Varsha Dixit

About the story: Nandini Sharma is a smart, spirited young girl who falls for the rich, bratty and handsome man Aditya Sarin. The Sharma and Sarin families are not only neighbors but family friends too. Nandini’s mother, Shruti and Aditya’s mom, Vibha are best friends or as they call it in India ‘chaddi-buddies’. Due to a misunderstanding and the untimely death of Aditya’s father, Paresh, Nandini and Aditya, split up and go their own separate ways. 

Three years later Aditya returns back to his hometown breathing fire and determined to extract revenge from Nandini. He acquires the advertising agency that Nandini works for and tries his best to make her life miserable.

What Aditya doesn’t know is, Nandini still pines for him and has been living like a zombie without him. When Aditya announces his intention to marry Gayatri, a pretty sophisticated lady he met in Europe, Nandini is flabbergasted but keeps up the façade of being unaffected and impassive in front of Aditya.

Will Aditya and Nandini clear the misunderstanding between them and finally get back together. You need to read the book to find out.

My Review: While reading ‘Right Fit Wrong Shoe’, I often remembered an Indian television sitcom which was aired by Star Plus-“Iss Pyar Ko Kya Naam Do”; the similarities in both storylines are striking. Of course the sitcom had plenty other twists and turns, otherwise it would have been impossible to prolong the simple story for couple of years.

What I’m trying to say is that the book plot has a lot of clichés, the usual humdrum of the sweet, pretty-little-girl-next-door falling for the rich, spoilt, handsome brat. You can’t really blame the author for this if the reader picked the book (even) after reading the blurb on the back cover-

What does a woman want? Shoes? Nope. Sex? Maybe. Yes but nowadays her own… Hmm, so then what does today’s woman really, really deep, deep down want? Still your hearts and hold your breath.

LOVE!

Now if that isn’t corny I don’t know what is! A clear warning sign :)

So, yes, I was rolling my eyes a lot when reading the book. But there were a few lines in the book which elicited genuine laughs, so the book isn’t that bad too. 

The language and the grammar in the book are good but excessive use of vernacular language is a huge negative for me (and the glossary of the Hindi terms at the end didn’t help since I only looked at it after I had finished reading the book).

To summarize-

Positive points-Humor quotient is pretty decent, language is good.

Negative points- Plot is clichéd, excessive use of Hindi terms put me off.

Verdict: A light, breezy read that could be enjoyed if not much significance is given to the plot. Avoid if you are not a particular fan of Indian sitcoms, especially the Ekta Kapoor types.

Rating: 2.5 + .5(for making me laugh out loud when reading the book in a crowded bus)/5