BOOK REVIEW – You Beneath Your Skin by Damyanti Biswas

You beneath Your skin is an intricate crime story centred on Indian American single mother and psychiatrist Anjali Morgan. She relocated to Delhi from America with her autistic teenage son and fights a daily battle to meet his complex needs. 

It is a multiple-point-of-view story that unfolds Anjali’s relationships with those closest to her. Her best friend Maya, from whom she rents an apartment at her family home. Her long-standing affair with Maya’s married brother, police commissioner Jatin whom she met in America when he was a student under the mentorship of her deceased father. He later left for India and became a police commissioner, married to his powerful boss’s daughter, an indifferent wife and mother. They have a son Varun who is perfect in his father’s eyes, with a lot going on under the surface.

Once Damyanti had made us understand these complicated relationships, we were off on a gritty, gripping ride!

You beneath Your skin takes us through the slums of Delhi with a theme that covers, poverty, power and corruption, love, betrayal, and drug dealing with the brutal murder of slum women burned with acid at its heart.

It is a crime book unafraid of digging deep into the city’s underbelly. Also, in this story, no character is safe!

Damyanti delivers a brilliant debut with layers of intrigue and twists that expose corruption in a way that I have not seen in fiction in a long time.

I loved reading this book and look forward to reading her next one, The Blue Bar.