A review by rocketbride
The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

3.0

It was ok, I guess. I'm not really the target audience. The writing was fairly flat but, like the similarly flat Internment, this is a very timely and needed book. I didn't really believe in her relationships with her white friends - the food was more skillfully described than their emotions - and I didn't really believe in her attraction to Ariana. Seemed very mechanical. What I really didn't like was how her parents' abusive behavior was so easily "balanced" by their apologies and cooking elaborate meals. They isolated her, imprisoned her, hit her, and coerced her into a marriage she was clearly against; they essentially set up a situation for her to be raped until she was "fixed." That shit is TRAUMATIZING, even if she escaped in the end and her mom has a tragic backstory. The importance of the abuse is really minimized by the "happy" ending, where Aunty Meena starts pushing Bengali lesbians at her.