Vik Singh is good at what does in fact he is very good. What does he do he writes code . He comes from a family with strong work ethic and a desire to be the next Steve Jobs or the next Bill Gates. When he is in the groove he goes for days before he takes a break. Vik after meeting a drug wholesaler at a party decides he can help improve this wholesaler's business and become somebody in the process. He seems to have it all money and nice place at Lake Tahoe and apparently a new girlfriend. But things start to take a turn when Vik notices someone has been in his house. Whose was it and what are they after ? The new girlfriend has secrets of her own that are revealed and he is also starting to get squeezed on finishing the program by his partner who has his own ambitions. Apparently there are no honors among thieves. And with all this he finds that the DEA is interested in him. This is a quick read that you will have to pick up to see how it turns out and find out what are the girlfriend's intentions are, does he finish the program ?, does the DEA catch up with him and for what and most of all whom was in the house. At times I did find the switching of the thoughts of the characters in almost mid-sentence a little annoying. I would rate this book 3 1/2 stars out of five. Thank you Netgalley and CQ Books for an ARC for a fair and honest review.

this was a great thriller, it had what I enjoyed from Breaking Bad and put it into a literary form. The characters were great and I enjoyed the plot in this thriller.

This was a wild fast paced read that kept me hooked throughout it is an interesting concept of a civilized world with computer coding and the criminal world coming together to cause havoc.

This is a very original premise and that made for an interesting read in itself. I found the book tried to be too many things - too many genres and alternately very focused on character building at the expense of plot and then vice versa. It was such a clever idea that I kept with it even when the characters annoyed me. This will find its target audience, I am sure.

A quite interesting story about happenings in Incline Village (located in Lake Tahoe).

Vik is a computer ace. He began programming even before there was a Silicon Valley. His girlfriend knows that he is holding something back about himself. She believes that it s about his work...

Meanwhile, Vik has been watched via binoculars. This, most likely, to steal some of Vik's computer work.

The reader wants to know the secret behind Vik and why this is so highly important to others.

An OK read especially for the espionage-minded and suspense lovers.

Many Thanks to CQ Books and NetGalley for a different type of read

"You're the math guy. You know you can go halfway forever and still never get somewhere."

This quote basically sums up the book. A character-driven literary novel with boring characters and pages of dry conversation poorly dressed up as quirky. With a few unnecessary references to Zeno's paradox and Heaviside function thrown in.

Actually, the premise of The Heavy Side is quite good - a nerdy Indian coder who teams up with a wannabe drug lord, making an algorithm that revolutionizes the cocaine dealing business. If it were marketed and written purely as a thriller, I think it would be a decent read. Unfortunately, it is not. The pacing (except Part II, which I rather liked) is mind-numbingly slow.

Even worse, most of the story is dedicated to the narrator and love interest, an underemployed girl with an English lit PhD who steals things, listens to Radiohead, and looks like a character from Baywatch. For some reason, she's weirdly conscious of her gender (female) and ethnicity (half-Persian).

Some incredible gems from her internal dialogue:
I set the tumbler down and blotted coquettishly at my mouth with a cocktail napkin.
I was utterly enthralled with the man sitting across from me.
From the male lead:
He wanted to embrace me, this hardcore girl who now seemed too fragile to touch.
(Yeah, that's not how you should write female characters.)

The author's understanding of race relations and the experiences of Mexican and Indian immigrants also seem to need some work. This was so apparent that halfway through the book, I actually looked him up because I was curious what his ethnic background was.

As for the setting, I'm in computer science and I've experienced the Silicon Valley culture. And I can say that it's just not convincing to me. Sure, Burning Man, Lake Tahoe, skiing... it just feels very surface level. Also, most SV yuppie-types I've met are not this boring. The parts about Vik while he's coding are... passable. Certainly not inspired, and there were a lot of details that threw me off (like the part about a Russian server), but maybe a layperson wouldn't notice.

The problem about this book isn't the writing quality or the story itself, but rather, it just doesn't pass muster as a literary work. This is a thriller about two normal middle-class-ish characters, a man and a woman, escaping from a Mexican drug cartel. It doesn't say anything meaningful, and it seems poorly researched, like a book written by an outsider. The subject matter simply isn't treated with respect. Sounds familiar (<a href="https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/
">American</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/books/review-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins.html">Dirt</a>), right?

Do not recommend.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.