‘My book will take you back to the ’90s’
In her second book, Vedashree KhambeteSharma has tackled a murder mystery, with an interesting dose of nostalgia. Titled Swear You Won’t Tell?, the author says the new novel stemmed from a thought about old friends and school rivalry.
The protagonist of the book is Avantika Pandit, a journalist, who finds herself in a tight spot when she is asked to interview her childhood nemesis, Aisha Juneja, and to add to it, her former best friend, Laxmi, is discovered dead. What follows is her quest to solve the murder mystery, which forces her to face old acquaintances.
“The book started with a thought — how much do we really know our best friend? There are [bound to be] things that we don’t know [about them]. That was the premise. And then the story took shape. I thought that it would be interesting for the protagonist to be a journalist,” says Vedashree, who was earlier a freelance reporter herself.
Often writers take inspiration from their own lives while penning a book. On whether she faced similar situations in her school life, the author says, “It is not like people singled me out and gave me bad treatment. You see things around you and an allgirls school is a different environment. The nuances are totally different so I thought it would be interesting to see fun and not-so-fun things that happen at an all-girls school.”
The book has a non-linear narrative and has two timelines. The author says that one part of the book happens in the present where Avantika is working to solve the mystery and the other part is told in flashbacks.
“It is a story told through her memories and that part is set in the ’90s. So there are mentions of Backstreet Boys, tuition classes, Bollywood stars of the ’90s, and slam books, the kind of stuff that ’90s kids will identify with,” she adds.
Vedashree’s first book, the amusingly titled There May Be An Asterisk Involved, was set in the backdrop of advertising industry, a world the author was a part of for ten years before becoming a writer.
On the subject of titles, she says, “It is a trend to have short titles for books but I wanted humour in mine. I thought it would be fun to have an awkward title. In this book, there is a secret, so I thought that my title should reflect that,” says Vedashree.
How much do we really know our best friend ? That was the premise of the book. It’s a story told through memories set in the ’90s. It has mentions of Backstreet Boys, tuition classes, and slam books, the kind of stuff that ’90s kids will identify with.
VEDASHREE KHAMBETESHARMA AUTHOR