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tshaff's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- 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
4.5
It first started as a quick, easy, and fun read and quickly turned into a reflective piece on 2nd gen families, culture, identity, and roles we fall into. My hear breaks for Omar and I wish I got to hear more about how he is at the end of the book. I see a lot of my own self-sabatoging behavior in Amina and it felt very reflective towards the end…..isolation is not freedom
nixieknox's review against another edition
4.0
I was rooting for all the characters, especially Omar (of course) and also the bookstore owning boyfriend whose name escapes me. He was the only one who seemed to know who he was, and was able to progress and mature. It was the family drama I love to read with an overlay of American racism post-9/11. I felt so sad for Amina, and the little glimpse of hope at the end was such a relief.
nuhafariha's review against another edition
4.0
Thank you to #NetGalley and #ForestAvenuePress for the advanced readers copy!
The Royal Abduls centers around the bond between Amina, an overthinking self sabotaging botanical scientist, and her nephew Omar, an lonely middle schooler outcast. Each brief chapter is narrated in turn by one of these two loveable if frustrating characters as they struggle to figure out the family's Indian heritage, Islamophobia, divorce and death.
What I loved the most was the way Koya was able to successfully navigate an eleven year old's innocent way of accumulating knowledge, showing the reader how Omar grows throughout the piece. The startling similarity between his thought process and thirty something year old Amina's is slowly revealed.
While the plot progresses in a steady, measured rate, the ending broke my heart completely and almost felt unreal. Regardless, this is a book that will make you laugh and cherish your family a little bit more.
The Royal Abduls centers around the bond between Amina, an overthinking self sabotaging botanical scientist, and her nephew Omar, an lonely middle schooler outcast. Each brief chapter is narrated in turn by one of these two loveable if frustrating characters as they struggle to figure out the family's Indian heritage, Islamophobia, divorce and death.
What I loved the most was the way Koya was able to successfully navigate an eleven year old's innocent way of accumulating knowledge, showing the reader how Omar grows throughout the piece. The startling similarity between his thought process and thirty something year old Amina's is slowly revealed.
While the plot progresses in a steady, measured rate, the ending broke my heart completely and almost felt unreal. Regardless, this is a book that will make you laugh and cherish your family a little bit more.
southernbellebooks's review against another edition
4.0
This was a great story that followed Omar, a young teen trying to figure out his identity as an Indian-American, and his aunt, Amina, who is also trying to find her identity but within her own life. They journey together as Amina assists Omar and is there for him when his own parents seem to be losing their way. It was such a nice look into the lives of others who may be struggling with something similar.
auntrurah's review against another edition
4.0
Not bad...not great. Story about finding one’s identity
zainub_reads's review against another edition
1.0
Biologist Amina Abdul moves to Washington, DC leaving a six-year relationship behind to complete her post-doc and also as a bonus be closer to her nephew, Omar.
Omar is fascinated by stories of his paternal Indian heritage and believes himself to belong to an India that is richly endowed with both culture and wealth.
Disturbed with the events of 9/11 he moves closer to his idea of belonging with Indians and takes on an Indian accent and spins a make-believe story of being royalty.
Meanwhile his parents marriage is crumbling and Omar is confused about his identity even more.
He gets expelled for bringing an ornamental knife to school and the story continues.
This book had a very interesting premise but it also felt like a huge lost opportunity.
Everything mentioned in the synopsis is not exactly a major part of the story and the exact point of the story felt unclear.
Carrying a knife and threatening a student could end in an expulsion even if instead of “Omar” it was “Oscar” who did it.
The story of racism would have been more believable if he’d been carrying a few batteries or something.
Anyhow, Mo and Marcy (shallow, narcissist, entitled and conceited characters) were already having problems with their marriage regardless of Omar’s activities though it’s presented that way.
Also, every time Mo or Amina do anything wrong blaming “all the Abduls” sounds childish and ridiculous.
I don’t really understand why the protagonist and their family are referred to as muslims when in all ways they happen to be atheists.
Not judging just by their frequent wine drinking (even during a funeral memorial meeting of an important family member) or the fact that the first meal mentioned in the story involves pork, but by their own admission and activities.
The story is basically about how their names and the color of their skins groups them with people of arab ethnicity and makes people discriminate against them because they look like them.
I would have preferred a story where there are actual believable instances of racism and believe me there are more than a lot of them!
This is in no way the story of a muslim family.
Another huge mistake in the book is that Omar calls his paternal aunt, Amina, “Chachi”, when she is his “bua” (in Hindi or “Phuphu” in Urdu).
Chachi is the term used to refer to the wife of your father’s brother.
That “chachi” bit irritated me quite a bit.
The story had potential.
Omar is fascinated by stories of his paternal Indian heritage and believes himself to belong to an India that is richly endowed with both culture and wealth.
Disturbed with the events of 9/11 he moves closer to his idea of belonging with Indians and takes on an Indian accent and spins a make-believe story of being royalty.
Meanwhile his parents marriage is crumbling and Omar is confused about his identity even more.
He gets expelled for bringing an ornamental knife to school and the story continues.
This book had a very interesting premise but it also felt like a huge lost opportunity.
Everything mentioned in the synopsis is not exactly a major part of the story and the exact point of the story felt unclear.
Carrying a knife and threatening a student could end in an expulsion even if instead of “Omar” it was “Oscar” who did it.
The story of racism would have been more believable if he’d been carrying a few batteries or something.
Anyhow, Mo and Marcy (shallow, narcissist, entitled and conceited characters) were already having problems with their marriage regardless of Omar’s activities though it’s presented that way.
Also, every time Mo or Amina do anything wrong blaming “all the Abduls” sounds childish and ridiculous.
I don’t really understand why the protagonist and their family are referred to as muslims when in all ways they happen to be atheists.
Not judging just by their frequent wine drinking (even during a funeral memorial meeting of an important family member) or the fact that the first meal mentioned in the story involves pork, but by their own admission and activities.
The story is basically about how their names and the color of their skins groups them with people of arab ethnicity and makes people discriminate against them because they look like them.
I would have preferred a story where there are actual believable instances of racism and believe me there are more than a lot of them!
This is in no way the story of a muslim family.
Another huge mistake in the book is that Omar calls his paternal aunt, Amina, “Chachi”, when she is his “bua” (in Hindi or “Phuphu” in Urdu).
Chachi is the term used to refer to the wife of your father’s brother.
That “chachi” bit irritated me quite a bit.
The story had potential.
agarje1's review against another edition
4.0
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy
I also posted this review on my book blog:
Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel is an emotional portrayal of a Hyderabadi American Muslim family and the struggles they face in post-9/11 America. The characters are lovingly drawn, and the conflicts they deal with never felt inorganic. The story is primarily told from the perspectives of Amina and her nephew Omar.
Amina is a post-doc in Biology who has recently taken up a new post in Washington, D.C., the city where her brother lives. Through Amina, we get an insight into how insidious sexism in the workplace manifests itself. This is especially evident with Amina’s colleague Anjali and her too-friendly relationship with their boss Chris. Amina herself feels like she is in a rut, having just left a long-term relationship and not really in love with her new job. As someone looking to pursue biology at a Master’s level, I must say that Amina’s experience with her position was not encouraging to me. But I applaud the author for not sugarcoating anything, but still giving us a sense of how Amina first fell in love with biology and her continued love of field work.
Omar is the son of Amina’s brother Mo and his white wife Marcy. The family is fairly disconnected from their Hyderabadi roots, but because Omar is perceived by others to be Indian and/or Muslim depending on the situation, he naturally comes to have an identity crisis. I felt the author’s portrayal of Omar to really capture what it is like to feel lost at such a young age. With his parents caught up in their own problems and a huge gap in his knowledge of his family history, Omar begins to turn to Amina for guidance. But Amina’s own issues with commitment make her somewhat unreliable for him.
Throughout this, the realities of being Muslim in 2000s America, or really just having Muslim names, blows out of proportion situations that should have been brushed off. An incident with a knife ends up having undue consequences for Omar, and the author clearly shows the Islamophobia in the punishment and the bullying that led Omar to it. The author also did a great job of portraying how Omar’s disconnect with his Muslim and Indian heritage leads him to being more confused about how people treat him. He is trying to come to understand what it means to be perceived as Muslim even when he is not religious and has no one to guide him. The novel’s last section is set in India, and without going into too much detail, I was relieved that the author deftly portrayed the differences and similarities between the character’s life in India and the US. The threat of a majoritarian government has yet to come into fruition in India, but the author clearly shows how othering it is to be perceived as Muslim even there. India is not the homecoming the character may have thought it would be, but it still represents an important stage in the character’s development.
The author’s choices when it came to presenting the family’s culture and various elements of desi culture was thought provoking. For one thing, it is unusual to see a Hyderabadi Muslim family claim Hindi as their ancestral language. But I thought it was a bold choice to have the characters state misconceptions about different aspects of desi culture because they genuinely believed them. Omar, for example, believes initially that Hindus are more Indian than Muslims. Amina at one point gives a definition of desi to mean being of Indian heritage, when the term applies to some other South Asians as well. For a desi reader like myself it was easier to parse out the misconceptions from what was actually true, but it could lead to some non-desi readers believing these misconceptions.
Despite a somewhat unorganized start, I found that this novel built up emotion very well, so that by the end I was absolutely gripped by these characters’ stories. This portrait of a family struggling to stay together was incredibly moving. This is a book that skillfully balances heartwarming lighter moments with heartbreaking darker ones.
I also posted this review on my book blog:
Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel is an emotional portrayal of a Hyderabadi American Muslim family and the struggles they face in post-9/11 America. The characters are lovingly drawn, and the conflicts they deal with never felt inorganic. The story is primarily told from the perspectives of Amina and her nephew Omar.
Amina is a post-doc in Biology who has recently taken up a new post in Washington, D.C., the city where her brother lives. Through Amina, we get an insight into how insidious sexism in the workplace manifests itself. This is especially evident with Amina’s colleague Anjali and her too-friendly relationship with their boss Chris. Amina herself feels like she is in a rut, having just left a long-term relationship and not really in love with her new job. As someone looking to pursue biology at a Master’s level, I must say that Amina’s experience with her position was not encouraging to me. But I applaud the author for not sugarcoating anything, but still giving us a sense of how Amina first fell in love with biology and her continued love of field work.
Omar is the son of Amina’s brother Mo and his white wife Marcy. The family is fairly disconnected from their Hyderabadi roots, but because Omar is perceived by others to be Indian and/or Muslim depending on the situation, he naturally comes to have an identity crisis. I felt the author’s portrayal of Omar to really capture what it is like to feel lost at such a young age. With his parents caught up in their own problems and a huge gap in his knowledge of his family history, Omar begins to turn to Amina for guidance. But Amina’s own issues with commitment make her somewhat unreliable for him.
Throughout this, the realities of being Muslim in 2000s America, or really just having Muslim names, blows out of proportion situations that should have been brushed off. An incident with a knife ends up having undue consequences for Omar, and the author clearly shows the Islamophobia in the punishment and the bullying that led Omar to it. The author also did a great job of portraying how Omar’s disconnect with his Muslim and Indian heritage leads him to being more confused about how people treat him. He is trying to come to understand what it means to be perceived as Muslim even when he is not religious and has no one to guide him. The novel’s last section is set in India, and without going into too much detail, I was relieved that the author deftly portrayed the differences and similarities between the character’s life in India and the US. The threat of a majoritarian government has yet to come into fruition in India, but the author clearly shows how othering it is to be perceived as Muslim even there. India is not the homecoming the character may have thought it would be, but it still represents an important stage in the character’s development.
The author’s choices when it came to presenting the family’s culture and various elements of desi culture was thought provoking. For one thing, it is unusual to see a Hyderabadi Muslim family claim Hindi as their ancestral language. But I thought it was a bold choice to have the characters state misconceptions about different aspects of desi culture because they genuinely believed them. Omar, for example, believes initially that Hindus are more Indian than Muslims. Amina at one point gives a definition of desi to mean being of Indian heritage, when the term applies to some other South Asians as well. For a desi reader like myself it was easier to parse out the misconceptions from what was actually true, but it could lead to some non-desi readers believing these misconceptions.
Despite a somewhat unorganized start, I found that this novel built up emotion very well, so that by the end I was absolutely gripped by these characters’ stories. This portrait of a family struggling to stay together was incredibly moving. This is a book that skillfully balances heartwarming lighter moments with heartbreaking darker ones.
yi_shun_lai's review against another edition
5.0
This. This book. Today, tomorrow, forever. It’s such a true representation of what it’s like to live a bifurcated existence. Every character is flush, each subplot so beautifully constructed. I never wanted to leave this book’s world, and I wanted to be near all of its people.
kareenbeanreads's review against another edition
4.0
The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya
4/5
I thought that this novel was so different than anything I have read before. I have read stories about people of other cultures trying to find a place in another country, but I have never read a story about an Indian-American like myself struggling to find their place in the world. There are many sentiments in this novel that I felt personally, especially with Amina and Omar both not having a huge connection to India and all the while trying to connect to their cultural heritage. I thought that this was a great novel that explored the ways that living as a brown person in America changed immensely in the post 9/11 world.
I really enjoyed seeing the aunt-nephew relationship of Amina and Omar develop. There were many tragic incidents that occurred throughout the novel and I felt a bit disappointed by the abrupt ending, but this only made the book feel more realistic. Overall, I thought this was a great and relatable portrayal of how it feels to be torn between two cultures and countries.
A huge thank you to NetGalley and Forest Avenue Press for this e-book.
4/5
I thought that this novel was so different than anything I have read before. I have read stories about people of other cultures trying to find a place in another country, but I have never read a story about an Indian-American like myself struggling to find their place in the world. There are many sentiments in this novel that I felt personally, especially with Amina and Omar both not having a huge connection to India and all the while trying to connect to their cultural heritage. I thought that this was a great novel that explored the ways that living as a brown person in America changed immensely in the post 9/11 world.
I really enjoyed seeing the aunt-nephew relationship of Amina and Omar develop. There were many tragic incidents that occurred throughout the novel and I felt a bit disappointed by the abrupt ending, but this only made the book feel more realistic. Overall, I thought this was a great and relatable portrayal of how it feels to be torn between two cultures and countries.
A huge thank you to NetGalley and Forest Avenue Press for this e-book.
madameroyale's review against another edition
5.0
I did not expect this book to make me so emotional on so many different fronts, but here we are. Koya is doing ALL the work here and it is superb. I was even interested in the scientific subplots! Man, oh man, I really loved this book.