India, Aug. 29 -- One picks up Not Safe for Work, expecting the familiar choreography of an office romance: two attractive people, professional hostility, proximity doing its inevitable work. Though author Radhika Agrawal does give all of that, but somewhere between a stolen bite of vegetable uttapam and a late-night brainstorming session, one realises that the book's more interesting love story is not between Kavya Mehra and Neil Desai! It's between Kavya and the city of Mumbai.

Spotlight falls on Kavya, who is a senior graphic designer at Jharokha, and has spent three-and-a-half years regarding the city as an adversary: expensive, exhausting, indifferent. Mussoorie is home, and Mumbai is the price she pays for her ambition. Neil, her m...