Skip to main content

Review of Vibha Batra's 'The Reluctant Debutante'


‘The Reluctant Debutante’ by Vibha Batra is a peek into the world of glamourous social events, but with a twist. Its USP is that it transports the reader to the days of yore when noblewomen were introduced to polite society as debutantes while being set against a completely modern backdrop.

The story is about identical twins who share similar looks but whose personalities are starkly different. The so-called troublemaker twin of the two impersonates her rather saintly counterpart in a “social event”(read: beauty contest) held in France, at the goody-goody sister’s behest.

What ensues is an enjoyable account of this rather ungainly sister navigating the competition while trying to rein in her true nature. The other contestants and her “Cavalier” of the opposite sex are described well and add colour to the story. The “Cavalier” came across as a kind of modern-day Darcy for Young Adults!

By making her protagonist almost anti-beauty pageants, Vibha appeals to that section of the audience who think these contests are frivolous.  It is a charming little story encompassing 165 pages, which has you rooting for the protagonist and marvelling at the way there are no loose ends. Everything is tied up with a neat little bow at the end, and there are a couple of twists and turns in the story to make it an interesting read.

Vibha’s style of writing is fun, engaging and witty. Anyone with a sense of humour will enjoy this book, and brand-conscious readers will be delighted with the number of fashion references in the book. The story reminded me of the Lindsey Lohan-starrer, The Parent Trap, only because it is about twins. It is suitable for late teens/young adults, but 42-year old me with a young heart enjoyed it just as much. The book also reminded me of ‘The Princess Diaries’ although the plots are not similar at all. Fans of Meg Cabot will love this book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of 'Magical Women'

I bought Magical Women by Hachette India on Kindle a few days back. It had been on my TBR for a long time. However, I hadn’t read up on what kind of a collection of stories the book would contain. People who like weird stories, horror, dystopia and sci-fi might enjoy this collection, which has been edited by Sukanya Venkatraghavan. It was published in 2019.   The editor’s note states, “Each story in this collection is unique in its representation of what it means to be magical.”   It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The book is well written, but some of the themes are a bit disturbing. The first story “ Gul” by Shreya Ila Anasuya has themes of lesbianism. The second story “ Gandaberunda” by S.V. Sujatha is violent and macabre. When I read the third story, ‘Rulebook for Creating a Universe’ by Tashan Mehta, I felt that although I was reading English, I was seeing Greek and Latin. It went totally above my head.   I really enjoyed the fourth story ‘The Demon Hunter’s Dilemm...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Book Review of 'Bitch Goddess for Dummies'

Recently, I attended a zoom session on chick lit by the Chennai Lockdown Literary Festival (CLLF). In the session, one of the speakers was Maya Sharma Sriram. I was so impressed with the way she conducted the session and answered the questions that I decided to pick up her chick lit novel, ‘Bitch Goddess for Dummies’ brought out by Rupa Publications in 2012. And I was not disappointed. I’m not sure if I was biased toward the book by the personality I had seen on zoom or not, but I quite enjoy chick lit and have read several chick lit novels in my thirties.   So the novel is about a 27-year-old woman Mira Iyer who decides to transform her personality from good girl to ‘bitch goddess’ to deal with the people in her life. Her mom who is constantly trying to fix her up with some eligible guy so that she can get married and Sanya, the real office bitch who is always cosying up to their bosses and vying for a promotion, are just two of the people in her life causing her angst. So it’s go...
3 comments
Read more

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang - A Book Review

  This book has been on my TBR since the time it was featured in The New Yorker in 2019.  I bought the Kindle edition recently and read it over 2-3 days. The author Esmé Weijun Wang is an American writer who has written the novel, The Border of Paradise (2016) and The Collected Schizophrenias (2019). She has received the Whiting Award and was named a Best Young American Novelist by Granta magazine.   Wang has been diagnosed with a slew of health issues: schizoaffective disorder— bipolar type, idiopathic peripheral neuropathy, fibromyalgia, complex PTSD, dysautonomia/POTS, chronic Lyme disease, and the extremely rare cotard’s delusion and capgras syndrome.   Wang calls her book “the collected schizophrenias” to include all the diseases that go into this basket, including schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, and schizotypal personality disorder. Since she was into psychological research herself, her awareness about these matters ...
Post a Comment
Read more