Reviews - Shubeik Lubeik | The StoryGraph

1.04k reviews for:

Shubeik Lubeik

Deena Mohamed

4.57 AVERAGE

lloydca28's review against another edition

4.5

emotional funny informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

alana_aestanteinvisivel's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

elliquence's review against another edition

5.0

4.5 stars. A very interesting and thought-provoking read with a dynamic art and story-telling style that is difficult to put down!

seeceeread's review against another edition

4.5

Third class wishes are sentient. They are capable of humor, cruelty, interpretation.

The world traffics in wishes. Many originate in countries with an historic belief in djinn. Our stories unfold in Egypt. Aziza's beloved, goofy husband, Abdo, is unexpectedly snatched from her in the middle of a silly fight. She wants desperately for him to forgive her and works fiendishly to purchase a first-class wish. Before she can use it, she's swiftly apprehended, wrongfully imprisoned for possessing something so obviously beyond her class position.

Nour is enrolled but rarely attends classes, too mired in woe and numbness and thoughts of how all 'this' (what's this?) is too much. While they graph their ups and downs, they slowly begin to ask – and even more painstakingly receive – adequate support, including from themself.

Shokry is plagued by holding the final first class wish of the trio, a holdover from his parents' generation. Already distressed over being pushed to sell the first two wishes, which his father taught him was strictly haram, he cannot understand why a trusted customer, clearly quite ill, will not accept his gift of a wish to cure her ... until she tells an incredible story to clarify her desire to end this life peacefully.

Mohamed tucks in adverts and statistics, international agreements on wishes and Egyptian history. She builds a parallel world where fully functional Mercedes cars can come crashing down from the sky into public fixtures, neighbors can have pet dinosaurs, archaelogists plotted to monetize their unique finds, vengeful donkeys speak and professors structure debates on the ethics of wishing. Like her djinn, she twists the story in clever and surprising directions to push us to grapple with the meanings of oft-repeated phrases, the collective consequences of each pursuing our own delights, the limits of policing and suffering.

Stellar 💜