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hellwurld's review against another edition
5.0
i first read this book at twelve years old, my era of rushing to the local library after school everyday and taking out two, three, four books. it was the peak of my interest in grabbing any YA book that sounded vaguely feminist, but a description like that doesn't give this book the credit it deserves. i spent years looking for this book after i read it, having forgotten the name about a week after i read it in all my unmedicated ADHD glory and it seemingly being removed from the library. a girl like that is the kind of book that sticks with you, sticks with you long enough to go through the work of finding it to put on christmas lists. i got the book last christmas, but put off reading it until now. i understand now, at sixteen, why i spent so long looking for this book.
a girl like that isn't the most well written book. the word choices can feel clunky and out of place and it isn't a timeless book, dating itself with the references and the slang. but a girl like that has the unique quality of discovery. on every new read, you learn more about zarin, about the world she lives in and the people she knows. zarin and i live in completely different worlds, lead different lives in different ages in different cultures, and i worry my interpretation of her story will not do her justice. i will say this though: through zarin, tanaz bhathena shows her intelligence and her deep talent. her writing deals with incredibly heavy topics, and she handles it realistically. zarin, along with many other characters, has trauma that stretches back in her lineage and trauma that is fresh and new for her and only her. bhathena integrates these traumas into the story seamlessly, her characters the model image for showing how trauma shapes you and changes you and breaks you without flattening her characters into their trauma, into a stereotype or a plot device or a puppet for whatever criticism she is trying to make. a girl like that is a book with human characters, for better or for worse.
a praise often directed at books that deal with problematic themes and problematic characters is that "there are no good people and there are no bad people, only people." it's a sentiment that i don't mind and have even said myself. but, something i love about this book is that some characters are good people, are bad people. bhathena dabbles in the morally gray, but this book has good people and it has bad people and bhathena does not let that stop her from writing them as people. her writing is an example of how to write good/bad people without depriving them of character, of nuance or complexity. tanaz bhathena has mastered emotion and morality and character, and she has mastered the art of making me happy and sad and angry at the same time. levity is what makes tragedy worth it, and bhathena is walking gracefully on the line between the two.
this is too long of a review for me to be able to say my point in just a few sentences, but i can: a girl like that is a book that is also a human life, complicated and tragic and loving, where the characters grow up and let go and you do it with them. a girl like that starts and ends with death, and somehow, i'm not as sad as i thought i would be.
i fell in love with this book at twelve and it stuck with my whole life. a girl like that is a book about love, despite everything and in spite of everything.
a girl like that isn't the most well written book. the word choices can feel clunky and out of place and it isn't a timeless book, dating itself with the references and the slang. but a girl like that has the unique quality of discovery. on every new read, you learn more about zarin, about the world she lives in and the people she knows. zarin and i live in completely different worlds, lead different lives in different ages in different cultures, and i worry my interpretation of her story will not do her justice. i will say this though: through zarin, tanaz bhathena shows her intelligence and her deep talent. her writing deals with incredibly heavy topics, and she handles it realistically. zarin, along with many other characters, has trauma that stretches back in her lineage and trauma that is fresh and new for her and only her. bhathena integrates these traumas into the story seamlessly, her characters the model image for showing how trauma shapes you and changes you and breaks you without flattening her characters into their trauma, into a stereotype or a plot device or a puppet for whatever criticism she is trying to make. a girl like that is a book with human characters, for better or for worse.
a praise often directed at books that deal with problematic themes and problematic characters is that "there are no good people and there are no bad people, only people." it's a sentiment that i don't mind and have even said myself. but, something i love about this book is that some characters are good people, are bad people. bhathena dabbles in the morally gray, but this book has good people and it has bad people and bhathena does not let that stop her from writing them as people. her writing is an example of how to write good/bad people without depriving them of character, of nuance or complexity. tanaz bhathena has mastered emotion and morality and character, and she has mastered the art of making me happy and sad and angry at the same time. levity is what makes tragedy worth it, and bhathena is walking gracefully on the line between the two.
this is too long of a review for me to be able to say my point in just a few sentences, but i can: a girl like that is a book that is also a human life, complicated and tragic and loving, where the characters grow up and let go and you do it with them. a girl like that starts and ends with death, and somehow, i'm not as sad as i thought i would be.
i fell in love with this book at twelve and it stuck with my whole life. a girl like that is a book about love, despite everything and in spite of everything.
hastings91's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars!
This was really amazing and appropriately disturbing.
TW: rape and rape culture. Like a lot.
Also want to mention this is an amazing contemporary but I thought it was going to be a mystery. That didn't make me like it less but I do feel there was miss marketing.
This was really amazing and appropriately disturbing.
TW: rape and rape culture. Like a lot.
Also want to mention this is an amazing contemporary but I thought it was going to be a mystery. That didn't make me like it less but I do feel there was miss marketing.
postitsandpens's review against another edition
5.0
This is a truly phenomenal book. I want to state up front that it's not light reading - there are a lot of real issues brought up in this book, from familial abuse to sexual assault to rape - but I feel it's a book that needed to be written. I like that it's an Own Voices book, detailing life in a country we hear about (Saudi Arabia) but don't truly know. I like that there are racial/religious issues here that I personally don't face, although I know others in the US deal with them daily, as well as issues faced by teens today no matter where they're from. This story is told through alternating points of view, and it takes a while for the whole story to come out, but once it does it kind of sucker punches you. I think this is a story everyone should read!
bookishblond's review against another edition
2.0
A Girl Like That isn't at all what I was expecting. This book is dark: it's about rape culture, sexual assault, and the pervasive mistreatment of women and girls around the globe. These are important topics, and we need YA books to work through them. But all that being said, I didn't love this book. I can see other readers enjoying this book, but it just didn't work for me. Disclaimer: I'm not an OV reviewer, and you should start with OV reviews!
A Girl Like That has a lot to say about the role men play in rape culture, but it is completely unaware that women and girls can also contribute. Almost every single man in this book is horrible: cheaters, abusers, rapists... But the girls are pretty awful, too. One of the girls at Zarin's school runs a tumblr page that's reminiscent of Gossip Girl; she posts the current gossip at the school and calls out her classmates who are too cozy with boys. This would have been a great opportunity for Bhathena to show us how toxic it is for girls to treat each other like this, but she glosses right over it. Nothing bad happens to the girl with the blog, and the slut-shaming is normalized. I was really disappointed in that.
Back to the men - every single man in this book is painfully chauvinistic (well, except Porus, but I'll get to him later). I get that Bhathena is trying to show her readers how horribly women are treated in Saudi Arabia, but for that technique to work, you need a foil. We need to see good Muslim men next to the bad ones (note that Porus isn't Muslim). But because there isn't a single good Muslim man in the book, it comes off as Islamophobic. I can see readers, after finishing this book, walking away thinking that Islam is the problem, not global rape culture. All the girls are worried about getting married off to creepy middle-aged men or getting caught by the religious police, and it really seems like Muslim men are the problem. If Bhathena had only showed us one decent Muslim man, I wouldn't have felt this way.
The characters were okay, but none of them really stood out to me. Zarin in particular felt underdeveloped. After all that she'd been through, she didn't really grow that much. And Porus. Don't even get me started. Whereas all the other men in this book are absolute pigs, Porus is perfect. Zarin treats him badly and pretty much only uses him, but he loves her anyway. I am so sick of that trope. Treating people badly (especially nice people who want to help you) is not cute. No one is going to see through your awful behavior to your good heart. Teenage boys especially should not be expected to see how deeply complex you really are. It's completely unrealistic (not to mention uninteresting) to read about a character like this. Porus bored me to tears.
This book started out like a Middle Eastern Before I Fall: Zarin and Porus have just died in a car accident, and are hovering above the scene, watching their family members grieve and the police process the scene. This is an interesting technique, but it felt out of place here. Zarin's ghost doesn't play much of a role in the book; we only see the ghosts in the first and in the last few pages, and they don't add much to the book.
We are soon swept back in time, and experience Zarin's story leading up to the accident from the perspectives of a few different characters. The multiple narrators technique is pervasive in YA, but it's one of those things that really annoy me when not done well. Here, we have Zarin and Porus as our narrators, but we also have a few random teenagers thrown in. All of their voices sounded exactly the same, and if the chapter headings hadn't told me whose turn it was, I would have had no idea.
I didn't enjoy this book, and now I feel like I'm in a book slump (it only takes one!). Hopefully my next read is better.
A Girl Like That has a lot to say about the role men play in rape culture, but it is completely unaware that women and girls can also contribute. Almost every single man in this book is horrible: cheaters, abusers, rapists... But the girls are pretty awful, too. One of the girls at Zarin's school runs a tumblr page that's reminiscent of Gossip Girl; she posts the current gossip at the school and calls out her classmates who are too cozy with boys. This would have been a great opportunity for Bhathena to show us how toxic it is for girls to treat each other like this, but she glosses right over it. Nothing bad happens to the girl with the blog, and the slut-shaming is normalized. I was really disappointed in that.
Back to the men - every single man in this book is painfully chauvinistic (well, except Porus, but I'll get to him later). I get that Bhathena is trying to show her readers how horribly women are treated in Saudi Arabia, but for that technique to work, you need a foil. We need to see good Muslim men next to the bad ones (note that Porus isn't Muslim). But because there isn't a single good Muslim man in the book, it comes off as Islamophobic. I can see readers, after finishing this book, walking away thinking that Islam is the problem, not global rape culture. All the girls are worried about getting married off to creepy middle-aged men or getting caught by the religious police, and it really seems like Muslim men are the problem. If Bhathena had only showed us one decent Muslim man, I wouldn't have felt this way.
The characters were okay, but none of them really stood out to me. Zarin in particular felt underdeveloped. After all that she'd been through, she didn't really grow that much. And Porus. Don't even get me started. Whereas all the other men in this book are absolute pigs, Porus is perfect. Zarin treats him badly and pretty much only uses him, but he loves her anyway. I am so sick of that trope. Treating people badly (especially nice people who want to help you) is not cute. No one is going to see through your awful behavior to your good heart. Teenage boys especially should not be expected to see how deeply complex you really are. It's completely unrealistic (not to mention uninteresting) to read about a character like this. Porus bored me to tears.
This book started out like a Middle Eastern Before I Fall: Zarin and Porus have just died in a car accident, and are hovering above the scene, watching their family members grieve and the police process the scene. This is an interesting technique, but it felt out of place here. Zarin's ghost doesn't play much of a role in the book; we only see the ghosts in the first and in the last few pages, and they don't add much to the book.
We are soon swept back in time, and experience Zarin's story leading up to the accident from the perspectives of a few different characters. The multiple narrators technique is pervasive in YA, but it's one of those things that really annoy me when not done well. Here, we have Zarin and Porus as our narrators, but we also have a few random teenagers thrown in. All of their voices sounded exactly the same, and if the chapter headings hadn't told me whose turn it was, I would have had no idea.
I didn't enjoy this book, and now I feel like I'm in a book slump (it only takes one!). Hopefully my next read is better.
salicer's review against another edition
4.0
While the pacing was a bit unbalanced at times and quick in its ending, I found this book to be otherwise superb. It broke my heart and forced me to look past my expectations for the characters in its pages. On the one hand, Bhathena forces the reader to look into the deep, prickly parts of femininity in Saudi Arabia. To an extent this is easy; we've more or less heard this story with different words in op-eds, open letters, and news reports. But Bhathena also makes the reader see through the eyes of the men in the story, and this is deeply uncomfortable. It is necessary to fully understand the scope of the sorrow in the story, but still an exercise in endurance and patience at times. The shifts in the point of view ensure that no point of view or turn of thought lies unexplored, even if it means exploring the slimier, venomous thoughts and expectations certain characters bring to a story like this. Truly, it's a good and authentic read, uncomfortable as it is, if a bit fast paced.
twhittie's review against another edition
3.0
There were lots of interesting aspects to this story. But overall I don’t know what story was about other than showing how awful teenage kids can be, no matter where they are. The ending gave some closure, but not enough to make me really like it.
jesassa's review against another edition
3.0
My instinct was to give this four stars, but upon further reflection I think it only warrants three. Although I've taken away a star, by no means does that mean I don't think that this is an important book. It's important and impressive and timely. There are problems with it though and for all its novelty those issues should not be ignored. I still think this book should be read widely.