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lulu7013's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- 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
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse
Moderate: Racism, Eating disorder, War, and Xenophobia
marissasa's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- 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
3.0
With a title like You Exist Too Much, I knew this book would revolve around trauma. What I didn't expect was for our main character to be so deeply toxic and messy along the way to healing. The most compelling part about this book to me was the mother-daughter dynamic and how layered it was with their Palestinian immigrant identities and the daughter's queerness. However, I found a lot of the rest of the book a bit dull and repetitive, specifically the way that each of the main character's romantic relationships was detailed. She repeated the same mistakes or fell into the same toxic habits in each relationship and it felt like the story unnecessarily hammering home a fact about the main character (that she has a love addiction) that we already knew from the start since the book is told out of chronological order. While I loved the representation of her journey with bisexuality and her struggles with her mother, overall this book didn't leave as much of a lasting impression on me as I hoped.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Racism, Sexual content, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Biphobia, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Cursing, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia
teainthelibrary's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- 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
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Xenophobia, and Homophobia
kmgard's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism, Eating disorder, and Xenophobia
megpotter's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- 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
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Xenophobia, and Homophobia
lexkoi's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- 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
Content Warnings
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
kierscrivener's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
medium-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
3.25
I am not completely sure how I feel about it. I expected something vastly different. The title and the synopsis really focuses on her relationship with her mother, heritage and sexuality. And it was. It did advertise vignettes, but I guess it was told a little too progressively to be snippets and too scattered to feel progression.
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
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
Content Warnings
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
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-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
Content Warnings
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 against another edition
emotional
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
3.0
It’s not hard to synthesize my feelings about this book into a review, it’s just hard to determine whether my feelings fall into feeling more positively or negatively about it. This wasn’t exactly what I expected. The premise is that the unnamed queer protagonist is a somewhat closeted Palestinian-American student who’s managed to live a lot of life and study and travel the world. Yet despite all she has going for her, she is desperate to find the love she and acceptance she craves from her mother, leading her to a lot of toxic habits and addictions, including a love addiction.
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.
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.
Content Warnings
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
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