Half Girlfriend is an Indian English ripening young adult romance novel written by Chetan Bhagat. The novel is placed in rustic Bihar, New Deli, Patna, and New York. The story is about a Bihari boy in search of winning over the girl he loves. It was his sixth novel which was released on 1 October 2014 by Rupa publications. The novel was also published in Hindi and Gujarati versions. It is devoted to foreign language speaker by Chetan Bhagat as it reveals the struggles and lingual clash of Hindi speaking young boy who belongs to the countryside from Bihar as he admits himself at the respected English medium St. Stephen’s college, New Delhi and falls in love with a high class modern rich girl. The language of the book is easy, elegant, and pleasant. As with all Chetan Bhagat novels, the book is enclosed in a casual and idiomatic language. Apart from the love story, the author also explains about social evil endemic in society.
Half girlfriend is a story of a boy named Madhav Jha who falls in love with a girl named Riya Somani. Both of them belong to complete opposite classes of society.
Madhav is a simple boy from rural Bihar, whereas Riya is a rich modern English girl from Delhi. Both of them get admission through the sports quota in prestigious St.Stephan’s college in Delhi. Madhav is a great basketball player. Two of them meet each other on the basketball court. While playing, they start to communicate with each other and soon became close friends. Madhav develops feelings for Riya and he tries to convey it to her in different situations but remains silent. He wishes her to be his girlfriend. But she refuses and agrees to him as a Half-girlfriend. But he demands her for a physical relationship and forces her. On hearing this, Riya breaks her friendship with Madhav and warns him not to contact and talk to her, and walks away. Madhav tries his level best to please her but everything goes in vain. Once he gets the courage to speak to her and when he does Riya gives him a wedding Card full of chocolate and stuff. Madhav is completely devastated and throws the wedding card on the dustbin.
Finally, he decides to go back to his hometown Dumraon to help his mother. On the other hand, Riya marries his childhood friend Rohan and settles in London, where he runs a great business. Before he left to hometown, Madhav gets a placement in HSBC but he rejects it. Madhav helps his mother Rani Sahiba run her school which is lacking funds to build toilets. So Madhav decides to get financial help from his area's local MLA Ojha but he rejects it and is not ready to help him. Through MLA Ojha he learns about the visit of Bill Gates to some schools in Bihar. He tries his best to convince Bill Gates to collect funds for his school. To finish his goal for the school, he is asked to prefer a speech in English.
During this struggle, he meets Riya who is divorced and gets separated from her husband. Riya helps him to prepare a speech in English. Together they get successful in their fundraising. After completing his speech Madhav search for his lady love Riya. But she left the place without informing him. While searching for her, he gets a letter where she tells him about her lung cancer and she is at the last stage only three months left to survive. And also he learns about the love of her for him by the letter. Madhav search for her everyplace but he cannot able to find her because she disconnects all the connection in India and moved abroad. After three years, Madhav learns that Riya is alive. She faked her illness. Madhav went to New York to search her whereabouts. He finds her in Cafe Wha, she sings a song with her eyes closed. He stands in front of her. Their eyes met and tears roll down from their eyes. Both of them reunited with full of love. Finally, their barriers break and they share their happiness. The book ends with the author visiting Madhav and Riya along with his son Shyam who runs a school.
