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bashsbooks's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I found the characters to be complex and well-fleshed, suited for the concepts they were exploring. I thought that who got names and who didn't was compelling and thought-provoking detail.
That said, I think that it was somewhat lacking in balance in the scenes in which it spent lots of time with versus the times and places it skipped through. And I felt like the thread of the Ledge and the mental health aspect fell out of the plot a bit awkwardly.
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Bullying, Misogyny, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Biphobia, Sexual content, Racism, Alcohol, Lesbophobia, Xenophobia, and Colonisation
Minor: Drug abuse and Drug use
radiant_radish's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Moderate: Islamophobia, Eating disorder, Sexism, Rape, Toxic relationship, Racism, Biphobia, Body shaming, Misogyny, Outing, and Homophobia
readingwithkaitlyn's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Homophobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Toxic relationship, Mental illness, and Child abuse
Moderate: Racism, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Outing, Abandonment, Misogyny, Eating disorder, Sexual content, Domestic abuse, Addiction, and Grief
Minor: Pregnancy, Body shaming, Alcohol, Colonisation, Genocide, Drug abuse, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Blood, Classism, Xenophobia, War, Religious bigotry, and Police brutality
DUI.lexkoi's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Eating disorder, Infidelity, and Sexual content
Moderate: Addiction, Biphobia, Outing, Mental illness, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Suicide, Misogyny, Death, War, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Drug abuse, Cursing, Alcohol, Domestic abuse, Colonisation, Abandonment, and Xenophobia
202claire's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, and Sexual content
Moderate: Biphobia, Colonisation, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Outing, and Religious bigotry
kierscrivener's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
We follow a twenties something bi Palestinian woman as she navigates a breakup and her constant need to go for the unattainable and to cheat out of fear. We see beautiful and poignant moments throughout but there's something missing. And it might be what I came in looking and didn't see. But we see her acting out and reacting because of fears and insecurity, and her realization of her own mother's trauma but I never feel like she ever fully lowers her guards, and the end has some poignancy but not enough to feel resolved or as if this is a stepping off point.
I love quiet stories but I like when we explore things and she never quite had enough introspection or conversation to fully invest me.
I enjoyed my way throughout and would definitely give Arafat another book
Graphic: Homophobia, Xenophobia, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia, Infidelity, and Biphobia
Moderate: Eating disorder, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Addiction, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts
solenodon's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Addiction, Biphobia, Eating disorder, Grief, Homophobia, Racism, Xenophobia, Fatphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Domestic abuse, Islamophobia, and Cursing
now_booking's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I haven’t read a lot of queer literature, but certainly none featuring an Arab, Muslim bisexual woman as the protagonist. Knowing that the author has experience with these intersections, I knew it would be non-cliché and sensitively and authentically handled. But then this wasn’t the predictable book one would expect about conflicts between sexuality and culture and religion. Indeed, this reads as a very secular book, there is a lot of Arab (and more specifically) Palestinian culture and history in this book, yes, but none of that is the main conflict with the unnamed protagonist’s reconciliation of her sexual identity. Nope. This is a book about love and the sometimes toxic and fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, and the generational impacts it can have. It’s a book about mental illness and addiction, about numbing brokenness, about reconciling with the things in you. It’s a book about sex and it’s a book with a lot of sex in it, but it’s not a sexy book. Sex in this book often feels like another manifestation of brokenness of looking for love in toxic places. The protagonist doesn’t “exist too much” so much as she’s conditioned by her upbringing to seek out the most toxic outcomes for herself. She is both a sympathetic and an unsympathetic protagonist. Her mother is toxic, but so is she. I had never heard of a love addiction before reading this book. I think it should be approached with the same sort of care for a potential trigger that one would approach any book about addiction. It’s pretty difficult to read some of the situations she gets into and it’s an exposition of how much addiction is an illness that ruins lives.
I think this was well-written. It’s not doing anything with highfalutin turns of phrase or anything extraordinarily fancy with language. There are some beautifully-expressed ideas, but that’s not the focus. Where the language of this book excels is in its simplicity and accessibility. It makes it a fast-paced read that anyone can read and understand without ambiguity. The emotions feel more raw, more visceral, less neat and tidy and perfectly processed because the language is so simple. There is no distance between the reader and the absolute messiness of the protagonist’s life. All of that said, I sort of struggled with the style of this novel. It was very... non-linear. It felt like a series of anecdotes of different timelines kind of loosely woven around the protagonist’s trajectory to healing and reconciling herself with her truth and her identity. I was interested in things like her relationship with her brother. The outcome of her relationships with her cousins. Who was she apart from a bisexual, Palestinian-American? How did she have all that money for travel, school etc? It was a little hard to feel immersed in this because it was only about such a specific segment of her life. There is good character development, but only in the area of her life that has to do with her addiction and with her mother. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point is that her life is consumed by this conflict. Maybe the point of flashing in and out of her life in the revelation of the story was to flash in and out off her protagonist’s life the way she did in her own real life. Overall, I think I liked this. Perhaps I’m not passionate about it. But I loved getting into this heroine’s head and learning about her. I’ve seen reviews mention fears that this novel is bad bisexual rep contributing to biphobia. I can’t speak about the truth of that perception, but as a non-bi person, I felt very able to separate the protagonist’s sexuality from her toxic behaviour in relationships. I recommend this if you’re looking for a book about reconciling oneself with one’s sexuality and the internal conflict around that, or a novel about addiction, or one about complex mother-daughter relationship.
TW: this book may be immensely triggering to some readers. I have put the CWs on Storygraph but I’ll summarize to say, if you may be at all sensitive to any sort of triggering content, consider avoiding this one, or fortifying your mental health first.
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Suicide attempt, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Biphobia, Homophobia, Fatphobia, Islamophobia, Xenophobia, and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Bullying
redwrapped's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Infidelity, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Biphobia, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, and Suicidal thoughts
cheye13's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The gorgeous writing makes the difficult subject matter easy to consume, but I still felt as though the book as a whole turned me inside out. I did find the narrative impossible to conceptualize linearly, but I liked that. The meandering, nonlinear timeline combined with the evocative language and vivid detail allowed me to become fully immersed in every individual scene before being pushed or pulled into another without warning.
In a lesser novel, a number of stereotypes would stand out as flaws, but they instead translate as realistic due to the nuances and depth of this story and the narrator. A beautiful book that I absolutely recommend.
Moderate: Addiction, Biphobia, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, and Sexual content
Minor: Cursing, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Grief, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts
A lot of the listed content warnings are mentioned in a flashback mode or treated as though they're completely in the past, regardless of the nonlinear storyline (i.e. the disordered eating is discussed only in post-recovery terms, the drug abuse was emotionally reactionary and explored, etc). The pedophilia is in the terms of an underaged character in sexual situations, not in terms of an adult actively engaging in pedophilia.