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flamepea's review against another edition
4.0
This is soooo adorable. An important sapphic story with quality representation for people of colour + queer islamic people. This book is the definition of queer euphoria
daenknight's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
mangomage's review against another edition
medium-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? Yes
4.25
eliza_cat's review against another edition
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
shannonohannessian's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the premise of this book and the representation, but I didn’t care for the main characters or their relationship. I did adore the relationship between Nishat and her sister, Priti, but ultimately not my favorite read.
evergreenreader's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
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? It's complicated
3.5
clockworkstars's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
- 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? It's complicated
3.5
"Of course Muslims can be gay. How can anyone think otherwise? The two aren't mutually exclusive. I am the living, breathing proof."
3.5☆|5
Je pense que j'ai lu ce livre en moins de 24 heures - à la veille du début du blocus (période de révision pour les étudiants en Belgique) pour ma session de juin - et d'une certaine manière, cela m'avait manqué. J'ai déjà lu un roman d'Adiba Jaigirdar, son second "Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating ", et même si celui-ci n'est pas aussi bon - ce qui s'explique par le fait qu'il s'agit de son premier roman - cela fut un plaisir de me replonger dans sa plume pour découvrir son "debut".
J'ai en effet pu passer un très bon moment entre ces pages, fait prouvé par la rapidité à laquelle j'ai pu dévorer l'histoire. Le premier point positif du roman est pour moi la relation entre Nishat, notre personnage principal, et sa petite sœur qui a un an de moins, Priti. De manière générale, j'ai adoré Priti qui était vraiment très appréciable et une figure réconfortante dans ce roman. De plus, voir des relations saines entre adelphes me fait toujours chaud au cœur. Les deux sœurs ont une complicité qui est très belle à voir. J'ai également aussi apprécié l'intrigue générale et la plume.
Cependant, comme a pu le souligner un avis que j'ai lu sur storygraph (écrit par mariahistryingtoread), on nous promet ici un rival to lovers qui s'inscrit dans une compétition et la compétition est en fait à peine présente. En effet, nous sommes donnés très peu d'information sur celle-ci et la temporalité s'écoule de manière très étrange. Cela n'avait à mes yeux pas beaucoup du rival to lovers (après, tant mieux pour moi, je n'en suis pas fan), cela manquait sans doute un peu de coups bas, de tension ? Autrement, leur relation m'a convenu, même si je suis d'avis que les actions de Flavia au cours de ce roman ne sont pas assez excusables - et qu'elle ne s'excuse surtout pas assez - que pour que leur relation puisse durer de manière saine.
Également, ce livre soulève des problèmes liés au racisme et à l'appropriation culturelle, qui sont des problèmes important à soulever, mais cela aurait à mes yeux put être abordé de manière plus profonde. Cela m'a semblé rester assez à la surface ? De plus, la rédemption de personnages racistes m'a semblée non pas mal écrite, mais peut-être un peu maladroite ? Cela aurait pu être mieux fait.
Cependant, ceci reste une bonne lecture. J'ai beaucoup apprécié les passages où le lesbianisme de Nishat est abordé, en particulier le comment cela change sa relation avec ses parents. J'ai beau avoir critiqué l'aspect "compétition" de l'histoire, celui-ci ne m'a semblé que "secondaire", laissant la place centrale au coming out & outing de Nishat. Dans l'ensemble, ce fut donc un livre assez adorable, qui a su me faire sourire. Donc est ce que c'est un mauvais début ? Non, loin de là. Est-ce que je recommande cette autrice ? Oui tout à fait ? Et est ce que je recommande ce roman de manière spécifique ? Alors, en tant que romance lesbienne YA, oui totalement, en tant que roman de cette autrice et bien peut-être ? Cependant, je recommande bien davantage son second roman que j'ai abordé plus tôt dans cet avis. Quant à ses autres romans, je ne peux pas encore m'exprimer dessus, mais j'espère les lire bientôt.
Représentations : MC lesbienne bengali et musulmane ; LI brésilienne noire et bisexuelle ; personnages secondaire bengalis et musulmans ; personnage secondaire coréenne.
Avertissements de contenu : racisme ; outing ; homophobie ; harcèlement ; appropriation culturelle ; islamophobie
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Homophobia, Racism, and Outing
Moderate: Cultural appropriation and Islamophobia
meech1e's review against another edition
Too slow paced. Would definitely come back to it though.
mariahistryingtoread's review against another edition
2.0
If I had nickel for every time I read one book by an author that was great only for the 2nd to be an immense downturn I’d be so rich I could write my own debut novel and force people through the same experience.
The Henna Wars is actually Adiba Jaigirdar’s debut and taking that into consideration it makes sense that in some ways it’s not as good as Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating. Writing is hard and not everyone’s first book is the best thing they’ve ever written. It actually feels like some aspects were sort of play tested in this one to be improved in that one because of how similar specific things were. It’s possible it’s just coincidence because it’s the same author and I’m seeing a pattern that’s not there, but it did feel like reading a rough draft sometimes for what’s to come.
The synopsis makes it out to be a rivals to lovers' competition story. It is barely rivals to lovers and there is barely a competition.
When the competition was first presented in class I didn’t even realize it had officially started because there were no parameters mentioned. Their teacher tells them there is a contest and that there is a prize of 1000 euros and that’s basically it. But, like not only do contests have rules, but assignments have rubrics. Flavia and Nishat, both just start up their businesses, but it doesn’t make any sense that neither had to run it by their teacher before actually launching or have any requirements to follow. The timeline is so fast and loose, when the teacher asks for their business plan it’s 40% into the book. So either only like a week has passed in like 200 pages or it took weeks before their teacher asked for something that she logically would have requested on day 1.
The competition not having quantifiable benchmarks to meet made me disinterested in it. Whether or not one of the girls was winning was arbitrarily measured. Plus, Nishat spends the book getting dunked on so the whole thing was moot anyways. Even if there were metrics to meet she was losing basically from the moment she came up with the idea. Thus, there weren’t any stakes. It made the competition feel like a gimmick so this could catch some of the enemies/rivals to lovers crowd since that’s been very In the last couple years. The competition never truly mattered and Nishat never really stood a chance.
Her loss isn’t the problem. The real problem is that it’s so unbalanced.
I want tension. I want trash talk. I want sabotage. I want escalation. I want to take things too far. The fun part of rivals to lovers is how both sides ruthlessly pursue the same goal and realize that the relationship being formed along the way was the real prize all along. How are they supposed to realize that when Nishat can’t say squat to Flavia either way? Flavia has a very popular, intimidating cousin (Chyna) who immediately sways the public in her favor. She barely has to lift a finger and she’s winning. It was so boring a conflict because Nishat had nothing she could do to combat that. Every time she tried she was narratively smacked down.
Flavia is a mediocre character who I honestly did not want to see Nishat with. They have an argument over the cultural appropriation early on and then Flavia just sort of ignores their fight the rest of the book.
In this time she doesn’t apologize. She just acts as if they never fought and continues to flirt with Nishat as if Nishat didn’t have a serious disagreement with her. And Nishat just lets her. Despite Flavia insulting her culture, standing by her bigoted cousin for 95% of the book and literally calling Nishat a brat for ‘victimizing herself’ after Nishat lashes out when she was OUTED we’re still supposed to be happy to see these two hook up in the end. Nishat deserved so much better and I was disappointed that her arc wasn’t about realizing that feelings weren’t enough, respect was more important.
It reminded me of another book Darius The Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram. It handled this conflict very well.
Like Nishat, Darius is unsure Chip is gay. Unlike Nishat, Darius is out and has a boyfriend which Chip knows about. The whole book Chip is sending these weird mixed signals to Darius. But, Darius is sure Chip can’t be gay because his best friend - Darius’ bully - is a homophobic jerk.
Though I had issues with it overall, what I appreciated about the book was that in the end Darius rejected Chip. Not because he didn’t have feelings for him, but because his self worth was more important. Chip is best friends with a bully. When confronted he’d always just make excuses for him. He was unwilling to stand up for Darius even just as friends. While it makes sense a teenager would struggle with these things, it doesn’t obligate Darius to date Chip while he figures out how to do it. In fact, for someone like Darius who is on his way to demanding more for himself it would be a step backwards to date Chip while he’s in these early stages.
I wanted so badly for Nishat to recognize that despite Flavia being sorry and Flavia doing the right thing in the end, that did not automatically make Flavia good dating material. At least for right now. An open-ended ending with the expectation that someday if things are different, once time has allowed proper growth to set in, then the two could give it a go would have been much better. Especially since queer teens are more likely to accept substandard behavior due to the scarcity of queer partners in many areas.
The fact that the two do end up together also makes Flavia’s arc feel rushed. Like a few pages before the two make it official, they basically break up because Flavia is not ready to come out and Nishat does not want to push her, however, she doesn’t want to be a secret either. Then suddenly, Flavia up and tells her racist, homophobic cousin about them and is ready to be publicly out. I’m not saying she can’t have weighed the pros and cons and decided to change her mind. I am saying that it felt mighty convenient that Flavia was barely able to tell her cousin off for spreading racist rumors yet now she’s ready to pull the trigger on her own sexuality.
It felt like it only happened so Nishat and Flavia could get their happy ending. Which, I’m not opposed to on its face. It just needed to be written differently.
The two barely had any chemistry anyways. Nishat felt overly invested in Flavia to a borderline desperate degree. I understand teenagers fall quickly, but that goes hand and hand with what I said before about how important it is to encourage them to look past the haze of infatuation.
When they did talk I wasn’t sure why Nishat even liked Flavia all that much. I’m demisexual so I’m aware that my view of romance is different than most. If someone reveals problematic views I lose all interest in them immediately, not even consciously. It takes a lot for me to have a crush at all. So it is totally foreign to me that after Flavia hurts Nishat with the cultural appropriation, she is able to ignore that Flavia has this shady viewpoint? Like she doesn’t even bring it up again for discussion. The two do not talk about it at all until it’s time for Flavia to apologize 80% into the book.
If Nishat’s culture is so important to her then shouldn’t she be? I don't know fighting Flavia about it? Isn’t that where the enemies part comes from? Misunderstandings, miscommunication and/or ignorance? The trope, by definition, means the two should be butting heads about it all the time. That’s the whole point.
I sided with Nishat, but this is a multifaceted, nuanced, constantly evolving conversation. When Flavia argues with her she actually makes some good points. By refusing to engage further to explore the issue the themes felt underdeveloped, Nishat seemed spineless, and Flavia seemed self involved.
One of Nishat’s closest friends, Jess, is clearly racist and it’s never addressed properly.
Jess and Chaewon want to pull out of the henna business when they see Chyna and Flavia are doing it. Nishat tries to explain why she needs to do the henna business only for Jess to say that Chyna isn't racist because she's an asshole to ‘everyone’ indiscriminately. She accuses Nishat of trying 'to pull the race card' by calling it cultural appropriation. She argues that Flavia isn’t culturally appropriating since henna is part of several different cultures and who's to say that henna isn’t from Africa too? When it’s pointed out that Flavia is Brazilian not African she doubles down.
This incites a rift in the group as Chaewon and Jess are already closer and Chaewon, despite being a minority as well, enables Jess. When she calls later to apologize, her entire apology still contains a defense of Jess’ stance.
Rather than Nishat removing the lot of them from her life permanently, the two eventually patch it all up with a half hearted ‘I didn’t get it’ 90% into the book. And you know Jess doesn’t fully understand what she did wrong because predating this they were in a fight so she and Nishat haven’t talked basically this entire time (circumstances bring them together before this, but it's a special situation that warrants waving the white flag at least temporarily) and per Chaewon’s non apology you can assume she didn’t try to explain it to her either. That level of racism is unforgivable without some meaningful, tangible growth on Jess’ part. It also speaks to Jess' inner thoughts about racial issues in general seeing as she couldn’t even empathize with two of her best friends.
The fact that Chaewon enables Jess and the duo's concerning history of ganging up on Nishat to force their course of action was dropped.
The book starts with Nishat coming out to her parents and it does not go well. Her parents decide to treat it like a phase. Then when that doesn’t work they try to shame her back into the closet as it will hurt their reputation if people find out. There is even a moment when Nishat worries she’ll be thrown out of her home. It’s painfully, unfortunately, realistic. It’s a hard pill to swallow that your parents’ love is conditional.
She grieves the relationship they once had, she grieves the relationship she thought they had, she grieves what could have been. It’s heartbreaking that people who purport to love her can’t see how deeply they’re hurting her. For weeks her mother won’t even speak to her. Neither parent will look at her. They even ask a family friend over to try to ‘talk some sense into her’ wherein the character basically calls her sick for being a lesbian.
All that being said, you can imagine how wild it was that her parents out of nowhere have a heel face turn and are suddenly supportive and cool with her having a girlfriend over to the house and watching Ellen like it’s no big deal. There’s no indication of what the catalyst for this change of heart was. It’s baby steps, but still their attitude does a complete 180. It was unbelievably unrealistic given how well documented their homophobia was previously.
The shining light in the book that did not ultimately disappoint in some way was Nishat’s relationship with her younger sister Priti. Priti was a consistent, warm presence. I loved her. In a sea of YA books with dysfunctional sibling dynamics, it was a breath of fresh air to have these two so obviously adore one another. Priti was a true ride or die. Even when they made mistakes, their loyalty to each other was absolute. I was happy that Nishat had someone like that in her corner while everything crumbled around her.
The Henna Wars is cute enough, but it’s definitely flawed. I recommend skipping this one and moving onto Hani and Ishu instead. It’s so much sweeter, there is no forgiving the racist storyline, the character arcs pay off, the ending follows through on the plot threads established even though it’s bittersweet and the message is a lot stronger. If I had read this first I’m not sure I’d have read anything else by this author for a long time. As it stands Hani and Ishu is so good, even this disappointment won’t kill my excitement for the sapphic Titanic heist book she’s got coming in December.
The Henna Wars is actually Adiba Jaigirdar’s debut and taking that into consideration it makes sense that in some ways it’s not as good as Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating. Writing is hard and not everyone’s first book is the best thing they’ve ever written. It actually feels like some aspects were sort of play tested in this one to be improved in that one because of how similar specific things were. It’s possible it’s just coincidence because it’s the same author and I’m seeing a pattern that’s not there, but it did feel like reading a rough draft sometimes for what’s to come.
The synopsis makes it out to be a rivals to lovers' competition story. It is barely rivals to lovers and there is barely a competition.
When the competition was first presented in class I didn’t even realize it had officially started because there were no parameters mentioned. Their teacher tells them there is a contest and that there is a prize of 1000 euros and that’s basically it. But, like not only do contests have rules, but assignments have rubrics. Flavia and Nishat, both just start up their businesses, but it doesn’t make any sense that neither had to run it by their teacher before actually launching or have any requirements to follow. The timeline is so fast and loose, when the teacher asks for their business plan it’s 40% into the book. So either only like a week has passed in like 200 pages or it took weeks before their teacher asked for something that she logically would have requested on day 1.
The competition not having quantifiable benchmarks to meet made me disinterested in it. Whether or not one of the girls was winning was arbitrarily measured. Plus, Nishat spends the book getting dunked on so the whole thing was moot anyways. Even if there were metrics to meet she was losing basically from the moment she came up with the idea. Thus, there weren’t any stakes. It made the competition feel like a gimmick so this could catch some of the enemies/rivals to lovers crowd since that’s been very In the last couple years. The competition never truly mattered and Nishat never really stood a chance.
Her loss isn’t the problem. The real problem is that it’s so unbalanced.
I want tension. I want trash talk. I want sabotage. I want escalation. I want to take things too far. The fun part of rivals to lovers is how both sides ruthlessly pursue the same goal and realize that the relationship being formed along the way was the real prize all along. How are they supposed to realize that when Nishat can’t say squat to Flavia either way? Flavia has a very popular, intimidating cousin (Chyna) who immediately sways the public in her favor. She barely has to lift a finger and she’s winning. It was so boring a conflict because Nishat had nothing she could do to combat that. Every time she tried she was narratively smacked down.
Flavia is a mediocre character who I honestly did not want to see Nishat with. They have an argument over the cultural appropriation early on and then Flavia just sort of ignores their fight the rest of the book.
In this time she doesn’t apologize. She just acts as if they never fought and continues to flirt with Nishat as if Nishat didn’t have a serious disagreement with her. And Nishat just lets her. Despite Flavia insulting her culture, standing by her bigoted cousin for 95% of the book and literally calling Nishat a brat for ‘victimizing herself’ after Nishat lashes out when she was OUTED we’re still supposed to be happy to see these two hook up in the end. Nishat deserved so much better and I was disappointed that her arc wasn’t about realizing that feelings weren’t enough, respect was more important.
It reminded me of another book Darius The Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram. It handled this conflict very well.
Like Nishat, Darius is unsure Chip is gay. Unlike Nishat, Darius is out and has a boyfriend which Chip knows about. The whole book Chip is sending these weird mixed signals to Darius. But, Darius is sure Chip can’t be gay because his best friend - Darius’ bully - is a homophobic jerk.
Though I had issues with it overall, what I appreciated about the book was that in the end Darius rejected Chip. Not because he didn’t have feelings for him, but because his self worth was more important. Chip is best friends with a bully. When confronted he’d always just make excuses for him. He was unwilling to stand up for Darius even just as friends. While it makes sense a teenager would struggle with these things, it doesn’t obligate Darius to date Chip while he figures out how to do it. In fact, for someone like Darius who is on his way to demanding more for himself it would be a step backwards to date Chip while he’s in these early stages.
I wanted so badly for Nishat to recognize that despite Flavia being sorry and Flavia doing the right thing in the end, that did not automatically make Flavia good dating material. At least for right now. An open-ended ending with the expectation that someday if things are different, once time has allowed proper growth to set in, then the two could give it a go would have been much better. Especially since queer teens are more likely to accept substandard behavior due to the scarcity of queer partners in many areas.
The fact that the two do end up together also makes Flavia’s arc feel rushed. Like a few pages before the two make it official, they basically break up because Flavia is not ready to come out and Nishat does not want to push her, however, she doesn’t want to be a secret either. Then suddenly, Flavia up and tells her racist, homophobic cousin about them and is ready to be publicly out. I’m not saying she can’t have weighed the pros and cons and decided to change her mind. I am saying that it felt mighty convenient that Flavia was barely able to tell her cousin off for spreading racist rumors yet now she’s ready to pull the trigger on her own sexuality.
It felt like it only happened so Nishat and Flavia could get their happy ending. Which, I’m not opposed to on its face. It just needed to be written differently.
The two barely had any chemistry anyways. Nishat felt overly invested in Flavia to a borderline desperate degree. I understand teenagers fall quickly, but that goes hand and hand with what I said before about how important it is to encourage them to look past the haze of infatuation.
When they did talk I wasn’t sure why Nishat even liked Flavia all that much. I’m demisexual so I’m aware that my view of romance is different than most. If someone reveals problematic views I lose all interest in them immediately, not even consciously. It takes a lot for me to have a crush at all. So it is totally foreign to me that after Flavia hurts Nishat with the cultural appropriation, she is able to ignore that Flavia has this shady viewpoint? Like she doesn’t even bring it up again for discussion. The two do not talk about it at all until it’s time for Flavia to apologize 80% into the book.
If Nishat’s culture is so important to her then shouldn’t she be? I don't know fighting Flavia about it? Isn’t that where the enemies part comes from? Misunderstandings, miscommunication and/or ignorance? The trope, by definition, means the two should be butting heads about it all the time. That’s the whole point.
I sided with Nishat, but this is a multifaceted, nuanced, constantly evolving conversation. When Flavia argues with her she actually makes some good points. By refusing to engage further to explore the issue the themes felt underdeveloped, Nishat seemed spineless, and Flavia seemed self involved.
One of Nishat’s closest friends, Jess, is clearly racist and it’s never addressed properly.
Jess and Chaewon want to pull out of the henna business when they see Chyna and Flavia are doing it. Nishat tries to explain why she needs to do the henna business only for Jess to say that Chyna isn't racist because she's an asshole to ‘everyone’ indiscriminately. She accuses Nishat of trying 'to pull the race card' by calling it cultural appropriation. She argues that Flavia isn’t culturally appropriating since henna is part of several different cultures and who's to say that henna isn’t from Africa too? When it’s pointed out that Flavia is Brazilian not African she doubles down.
This incites a rift in the group as Chaewon and Jess are already closer and Chaewon, despite being a minority as well, enables Jess. When she calls later to apologize, her entire apology still contains a defense of Jess’ stance.
Rather than Nishat removing the lot of them from her life permanently, the two eventually patch it all up with a half hearted ‘I didn’t get it’ 90% into the book. And you know Jess doesn’t fully understand what she did wrong because predating this they were in a fight so she and Nishat haven’t talked basically this entire time (circumstances bring them together before this, but it's a special situation that warrants waving the white flag at least temporarily) and per Chaewon’s non apology you can assume she didn’t try to explain it to her either. That level of racism is unforgivable without some meaningful, tangible growth on Jess’ part. It also speaks to Jess' inner thoughts about racial issues in general seeing as she couldn’t even empathize with two of her best friends.
The fact that Chaewon enables Jess and the duo's concerning history of ganging up on Nishat to force their course of action was dropped.
The book starts with Nishat coming out to her parents and it does not go well. Her parents decide to treat it like a phase. Then when that doesn’t work they try to shame her back into the closet as it will hurt their reputation if people find out. There is even a moment when Nishat worries she’ll be thrown out of her home. It’s painfully, unfortunately, realistic. It’s a hard pill to swallow that your parents’ love is conditional.
She grieves the relationship they once had, she grieves the relationship she thought they had, she grieves what could have been. It’s heartbreaking that people who purport to love her can’t see how deeply they’re hurting her. For weeks her mother won’t even speak to her. Neither parent will look at her. They even ask a family friend over to try to ‘talk some sense into her’ wherein the character basically calls her sick for being a lesbian.
All that being said, you can imagine how wild it was that her parents out of nowhere have a heel face turn and are suddenly supportive and cool with her having a girlfriend over to the house and watching Ellen like it’s no big deal. There’s no indication of what the catalyst for this change of heart was. It’s baby steps, but still their attitude does a complete 180. It was unbelievably unrealistic given how well documented their homophobia was previously.
The shining light in the book that did not ultimately disappoint in some way was Nishat’s relationship with her younger sister Priti. Priti was a consistent, warm presence. I loved her. In a sea of YA books with dysfunctional sibling dynamics, it was a breath of fresh air to have these two so obviously adore one another. Priti was a true ride or die. Even when they made mistakes, their loyalty to each other was absolute. I was happy that Nishat had someone like that in her corner while everything crumbled around her.
The Henna Wars is cute enough, but it’s definitely flawed. I recommend skipping this one and moving onto Hani and Ishu instead. It’s so much sweeter, there is no forgiving the racist storyline, the character arcs pay off, the ending follows through on the plot threads established even though it’s bittersweet and the message is a lot stronger. If I had read this first I’m not sure I’d have read anything else by this author for a long time. As it stands Hani and Ishu is so good, even this disappointment won’t kill my excitement for the sapphic Titanic heist book she’s got coming in December.