Charliezz by Trupthi Guttal and Zeeshan Farooqui. Review on Charliezz - Trupthi Guttal and Zeeshan Farooqui

I was contacted by author Zeeshan Farooqui to read and review the book'Charliezz' jointly authored by Trupthi Guttal.

To begin with, here are the main details about the book:

Title: Charliezz

Authors: Trupthi Guttal and Zeeshan Farooqui

Publishers: Frog Books

No. of pages: 191

The story revolves around the two protagonists - Zahir Pathan and Khushi Patil - and gives us a glimpse into their professional lives. The events in the book are centered around their office lives, an engineering firm whose employees seem disgruntled wit the life they are subjected to each day - coming to office and getting in the grind only for the paycheck, slogging off without any real motivation to work.

The setting is typical and the characterization is also kind of predictable, what with the dominating boss(called the Ring Leader here) and the subdued employees.

From the start, it is visible that the authors have made a conscious effort to create the narrative in a not-so-often-seen way in an Indian writing. Though this style of narrative could have worked wonders for the book, however, I felt that somewhere down the line, the authors lost track of keeping a connect between the different incidents that were supposed to be intertwined. This disconnect only seems to escalate with each page.

Many stories and incidents have been woven in the main story, but sadly, either due to the multiplicity of incidents or due to a lack of co-ordination between the two authors, the stories are not able to hold their own. This leads to a wavering down of the story as a whole and the reader is left wanting much much more.

I will not blame the authors here. They had a story and it was the job of the publishing house to take care of the editing and the structure. But I have noticed this problem with most of the self-published Indian authors. Sadly, we have only Leadstart/Frog Books to help such authors, and they do a horrible job of making a book. Most authors lose out a good sale due to the lack of professionalism on their part.