Slumdog Deja Vu, in The Accidental Apprentice

I read the first pages of The Accidental Apprentice by Vikas Swarap with a sense of deja vu.  Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire) by him, also started with the protagonist being under arrest.  Both books deal with situations where a fantastical amount of money is within reach of our hero or heroine.  Don’t get me wrong both are good books in their own right, I was just a little distracted by the commonalities.

Wanting to know why Sapna had landed up in jail, had me wanting to race a little toward the end.  She was meant to complete 7 tests but by test 5 I was saying, “ok, I get it Sapna is whatever the business equivalent of the pope is, lets cut to the chase.”  Most will not agree with me, I remember feeling rather the same about the main character in The Power of One.

A book’s ending often makes or breaks the reading experience.   Don’t get me started on reading over 1000 pages of A Suitable Boy, only to get to an ending which pissed me off (I don’t care if it was the realistic ending).  The Accidental Apprentice did not disappoint.  On turning the last page, I recommend the book to my mother and my husband.  I only recommend about 1 in 10 books which I read to Cliff.  I look forward to hearing what he thinks of it.