Author: Aayush
Available at: Flipkart
Toppers is a young adult fiction book, which is a thriller to boot but surprisingly it is set in a school in a fictional town Woodsville. I got this book as part of the Flipkart Book Review Program. Generally, the school tales that we read are the innocent and naive Enid Blytons or the Archie and Jughead cartoons, which give us a romanticised view of the school life. However, this could not be further from reality, as it is illustrated in Toppers.
Toppers portrays the tales of students in Woodsville where the buzz word is competition. The stress, the adrenaline rush, the agony and the tension of school life is the constant factor throughout the book. It makes you revisit your school days and while you are reminiscing over nostalgia, it gives you a jolt of the blue as the tale is peppered with competition references and the burning desire to succeed at all costs.
All the major protagonists in the book have their own belief system and philosophies, which they safe guard at all costs. The characters are well-etched and they have their own personality, which carries the book forward. Vishakha, Dev Bhushan, Ramanujam, Himanshu and Rikhhe Rajput will seem like your cronies while you are reading the book and you will sometimes nod in agreement when you will find the traits of your own school friends in them.
The writing is taut, the plot is good and as i am always partial to thrillers, i would recommend it to anyone who wants to know how life is in the current day schools and the competition that is buzzing through the whole educational system.
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