Book Review “Man Vs Wife" by Ashish

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the title. The entire cover felt like a paradox. The cover pictured the mehendi clad hand of the bride holding the sherwani clad hand of groom, and the title in respective gender colours; not “Husband” but “Man Vs Wife”.

Book Blurb

The story is a sweet and sour narrative of a young, impulsive IT professional who wants to divorce his wife. Having come across the draconian Indian laws highly biased in favor of his wife, he teams up with a middle-aged struggling lawyer willing to go to any extent for greed. The lawyer advises the husband to break the seven vows of marriage one by one, so that his wife starts hating him and agrees for mutual consent route, even before they decide to go for a contested divorce. 

Will this husband be able to break the seven vows of marriage, at last? And the greedy lawyer... will he be successful to break this marriage off? 

“Man Vs Wife” is the story of Viral Singh wanting to divorce his wife Trisha and trying to escape the severity of women favouring laws for separation. The background behind the same and whether he succeeds in it forms the rest of the story.

The book is written mostly in a first person narrative. The streets and places of every city, especially Lucknow are captured especially well and interwoven seamlessly in the story. There are times where some events feel too random. But once the main plot resumes, the story moves effortlessly.

Viral Singh as the central character is portrayed flawlessly. His frustration, slips, urges and near escapes are captured perfectly. Trisha and Jositha as the indifferent wife and old fling play their part well. Anwar as lawyer-cum-friend has his moments. In all, no character is overused.

Personally I really loved the use of seven promises of Hindu marriage and their step by step breaking by the protagonist. The comparison with rest of the religions add as a cherry on the cake. The author perfectly captures how the society still finds the idea of wife oppressed husbands as ridiculous and how the women centric laws divorce in India are misused to torment a man are a reality. He also captures the modern tendency to give up too soon on relationships by modern couples even in love marriages. It isn’t perfect, but it has its moments and can serve as a fun but eye-opening read about relationships.


For Ashish well written light but dark comedy that is perfect example of “Marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightening” my rating for “Man Vs Wife” would be 4/5.

Overall Verdict:- Light, Fun and Insightful


Book can be found at - Amazon India & Amazon USA

Review from other readers can be found at GoodReads