A review by magical_booklush
The Story That Never Started by Piyush Gupta

4.0

This novel was an excellent read for me. If to be honest, I was not quite interested in reading it as I thought it would be a common thriller novel that all Indian authors are writing these days but this one was totally unique. This novel had so many characters and the main 3 characters; Dhir, Mohit and Sahil were so cleanly and smoothly described. Their back story presentation and how they met each other and embarked on this wonderful journey was portrayed so flawlessly. I personally liked the character of Dhir and Roshni. I did find a bit of errors in the story and I somehow couldn’t connect to all the characters but one thing that I loved about this book is that it portrayed the effect of Terrorism on Muslims.

Being a Muslim girl myself, I know how people look at a Muslim family and during terrorist attacks, we are either directly or indirectly targeted, even though we did nothing but it’s pointed to us. Piyush Gupta won my heart in just a few pages where he showed Dhir’s harshness over Sahil for being a Muslim. This author explored all corners and left no stone unturned in the writing of this book. He has added a touch of the LGBTQ essence, the Muslim community, the interfaith marriages, the love of brother and sister, the corruption in India where a man can willingly steal poor people’s money and not get pointed at. I must say that I will be keeping an eye out for his next book and can’t wait to read what he is writing next.

One more thing that I would like to point out here that is not for the review but just my opinion.

He wrote about Islamophobia despite being a Hindu and he also presented a Muslim family and depicted their life but in no way did I find anything offensive. So this guy clearly did a great job and many of you must be thinking why am I taking this issue seriously, it’s just a Muslim character in the book but portraying that character and giving it a proper and decent POV is very difficult and Piyush Gupta won my heart at this point.