Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
Recommended: I don’t think so?
Because I ended it feeling like I didn’t really get much out of it, and it’s low-key depressing. Go for it if you like sprawling stories that cover decades and multiple characters, with a tale that weaves between everyone it touches

Summary
This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything,and the family ties that bind can also kill.New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters’ connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Thoughts
If you ask me what this book is about I would probably have a bit of a hard time explaining. It’s strangely complex, one of those stories where every character you meet is involved with all of the others in some obscure way. While that can have a pretty cool effect, in this one it left me a bit unsure of why things mattered. And when it came to the very end, I genuinely had no idea what happened, let alone why it happened.
My biggest struggle with this book is that everything in it is terrible. Nothing good happens, basically ever. If you think something good has just happened, know that you’re probably wrong and it will be later revealed to actually be a terrible thing. Everyone is unhappy, even the people who are “supposed” to be happy because they’re rich, or in control, or whatever it may be. This was just such a tale of misery that it was really hard to witness it all.