Khandav is a Hindi language novella written by author Varun Vilom. The story is part one of Khandav series. It follows the story of Vinesh Kumar, manager in a pharmaceutical company finds himself deep in the alleys of drug business.

The story starts with Vinesh Kumar who leads a happy life with his wife and son. He has a stable job and a decent life but one wrong move and he finds himself jobless with his reputation maligned. With nowhere to turn to, he decides to enter the business of drugs with three of his friends.

The beginning of the story is quite satisfactory and introduction of each character is done in an engaging manner. As the story progresses we can see how every choice made by the main character takes him to the point of no return. The world of crime beckons him and he falls headfirst into it.

While reading the book, I found that the writing could have been better. There are a lot of half-sentences which do not look good in a book. A lot of times it felt like reading a screenplay rather than a novel.

More focus was needed on development of characters as there is no connect for the readers. As a reader I neither felt pity for the lead character when he was renedered jobless for no mistake of his nor any thrill when he was facing the world of crime.

Of course, as this is just the first part of the series more is to come in the later parts. The topic is such that there is a lot of potential with regards to crime, escape from authorities and gang wars along with the personal lives of protagonist and his family and friends.

My rating: 3/5

I would like to thank the author for review copy of the Kindle book.