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A review by thebooksheelf
How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures by Huma Qureshi
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
This was one of those books I sat down with intending just to read the first couple of chapters and then wound up not moving until I’d turned the final page.
This is a beautifully crafted memoir from award-winning writer and journalist, Huma Qureshi that, on a surface level, details the process of her meeting and then marrying her white, initially Christian husband as a British Pakistani Muslim woman. But like any really amazing memoir, there is so much more to these two hundred and ten pages than can be adequately in a bite-sized blurb.
The book opens at the close, we are immediately introduced to Huma’s six year old son, Suffian, to her current family life and we are treated to glimpses of her happy present throughout as the timeline skips back and forth between ‘These Days’ and ‘Those Days’. This is a book about finding love that doesn’t rely on or require a frantic ‘will they/won’t they. It’s a deeply personal, often heart-wrenching but nonetheless very gentle exploration of love, family, loss, identity, self-acceptance and so much more, made all the more powerful by our surety of everything working out in the end.
If you are a memoir fan, this is a must-read for 2021 and it is officially out tomorrow! I absolutely loved it, it’s been such a joy watching all the glowing reviews roll in over these past few weeks and given me a good giggle at how many people (like me) have found themselves accidentally reading the whole book in one go.
Disclaimer: This is an unpaid review, but I am working with Ella Chapman on a project for Elliott and Thompson.
This is a beautifully crafted memoir from award-winning writer and journalist, Huma Qureshi that, on a surface level, details the process of her meeting and then marrying her white, initially Christian husband as a British Pakistani Muslim woman. But like any really amazing memoir, there is so much more to these two hundred and ten pages than can be adequately in a bite-sized blurb.
The book opens at the close, we are immediately introduced to Huma’s six year old son, Suffian, to her current family life and we are treated to glimpses of her happy present throughout as the timeline skips back and forth between ‘These Days’ and ‘Those Days’. This is a book about finding love that doesn’t rely on or require a frantic ‘will they/won’t they. It’s a deeply personal, often heart-wrenching but nonetheless very gentle exploration of love, family, loss, identity, self-acceptance and so much more, made all the more powerful by our surety of everything working out in the end.
If you are a memoir fan, this is a must-read for 2021 and it is officially out tomorrow! I absolutely loved it, it’s been such a joy watching all the glowing reviews roll in over these past few weeks and given me a good giggle at how many people (like me) have found themselves accidentally reading the whole book in one go.
Disclaimer: This is an unpaid review, but I am working with Ella Chapman on a project for Elliott and Thompson.