Started: 1/28/2019
Finished: 1/28/2019
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I was pretty hesitant to pick this up. Tahereh is one of my favorite authors of all time, but contemporary is not one of my favorite genres. Every time I saw this book in person I would pick it up and then put it down. I’m not really sure what exactly kept deterring me from reading this book, but when I saw that they had the audiobook on Scribd I was ready for it. For some reason it seemed easier to tackle as an audiobook.
Before picking this up, I had heard some pretty negative reviews about the book being too romance-heavy and not enough about the main character’s struggles with Islamophobia. That really rubbed me the wrong way. Reviewers, specifically white reviewers, expect too much pain out of books written by and about POC. They expect books like AVLEOS to be mostly about POC pain and less about all of the happy and fluffy stuff that comes with a lot of contemporary written by white authors. Let POC be happy! Let people who practice Islam be happy! Our and their stories don’t need to be all about pain. We can fall in love too.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. It made me cry a lot but it also really lit up my day when I read it. Somehow I was able to listen to the entire audiobook in one sitting, and getting to digest this story like that was really perfect. I loved getting to learn about Shirin and her life at a school that didn’t accept her for who she was. I also really loved how brash and “unlikable” she was. I really like this new trend in YA contemporaries where the female MCs are outspoken and tough and headstrong. The two that come to mind are Leah and Shirin, and I love them both for it.
I also really enjoyed the love story between Shirin and Ocean. It felt really natural and very typical to high school love stories. It felt realistic and very different from Tahereh’s other romances, like in her Shatter Me books (which I love). I really liked how Ocean felt like his own, fleshed-out character. Even though the book was fairly short, it didn’t feel like anything about his character or their romance arc was sacrificed.
The ending was really perfect to me. I love these kind of “realistic” endings where things don’t end in a HEA. I actually prefer when they don’t end in HEA, especially in YA books. It’s nice when they do end up happy in the end, but it’s also nice to see that your first love doesn’t have to be your last. Overall, I really loved this book and the way it tackled both Islamophobia and falling in love in high school. It was done so beautifully.
