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lmaonice 's review for:
The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali
by Sabina Khan
3.5
This is a very difficult book for me to rate.
Truthfully, I cannot say I enjoyed this book. I knew it would be dark and heavy going in, but it is so much darker and heavier than I ever thought it would be. It reached levels I never would have expected. This went beyond what I expected and went into the territory of just me reading about explicit child abuse. Every time I picked up this book I was filled with anxiety and dread because I found the subject matter so genuinely horrifying to read about, it was so upsetting.
However, I can't give it a low rating, because my lack of enjoyment of it wasn't because it wasn't good, but because it was so successful in making me feel like I was in Rukhsana's shoes. There was a moment that this book made me cry and I had to put it down and I can't discount what a triumph that is for the book because the point of hard hitting contemporaries is for them to hurt you.
I was expecting the homophobia in this book to be rife, which it was, and honestly I've come to realise I'm not as comfortable with reading stories about homophobia as I thought I was. But what really caught me off guard is the misogyny. I don't really know why, it shouldn't have, but I guess I was just distracted by the main theme that I forgot that would be one too, and the misogyny explored in this book infuriated and upset me too.
This is not my culture, so there's certain things I don't feel comfortable commenting on, but I will say that I really liked that despite it showing the homophobia and misogyny that can exist within this culture, it also made a point to show that not everyone thinks in this way, and same as in any other culture there's good people and bad people, open minded people and narrow minded people. It's nuance like that that shows the importance of own voices representation.
In terms of the writing there's nothing wrong with this writing but it's also not a prose that stands out. It's simple, to the point, and it works.
I loved Rukhsana, which is good, and I also loved Shaila, Aamir, Irfan, Sara, Nani, and Sohail, and it was nice that there were so many characters I really loved
However, I cannot put into words how much I hated Ariana. Rukhsana deserves so much better than her, she is a terrible girlfriend to her throughout the book and I just could not stand her.I did appreciate how in the end she realised she'd been wrong and she apologised, and it makes me forgive the book for making her so detestable because obviously she WAS in the wrong, but it takes far too long and far too much for her to realise she'd treated Rukhsana so poorly. It's not until Rukhsana explains all the gritty details to her for her to go "oh, while this was kinda tough for me it was an extremely traumatising experience for Rukhsana and I've been selfish" like bitch I'm sorry, just the fact that Rukhsana was being forced into a marriage she didn't want should have been enough for you to realise this is not about you, but no, instead she plays the victim the entire fucking book and only when is every little thing explained to her does she realise Rukhsana had everything a million times worse. Obviously she isn't the only character I hated, Rukhsana's parents treat her objectively worse, but the thing is we're like supposed to be aware that they're being awful, they're the ones putting Rukhsana through what is straight up just child abuse. Whereas with Ariana, while it does ultimately say she was in the wrong, I do feel we are supposed to like her and root for her and Rukhsana to be together and I just. didn't. lol. I feel similarly about Rukhsana's friends Jen and Rachel, although less so because we don't see as much as them, but it's basically the same thing, the book does ultimately show they were in the wrong but it takes them having to listen to every single gritty detail before they even try to understand Rukhsana's perspective and realise they were wrong. They were such shitty friends lol
Anyway. I think this book is good. I think it's important. It impacted me emotionally. And I hated reading it
This is a very difficult book for me to rate.
Truthfully, I cannot say I enjoyed this book. I knew it would be dark and heavy going in, but it is so much darker and heavier than I ever thought it would be. It reached levels I never would have expected. This went beyond what I expected and went into the territory of just me reading about explicit child abuse. Every time I picked up this book I was filled with anxiety and dread because I found the subject matter so genuinely horrifying to read about, it was so upsetting.
However, I can't give it a low rating, because my lack of enjoyment of it wasn't because it wasn't good, but because it was so successful in making me feel like I was in Rukhsana's shoes. There was a moment that this book made me cry and I had to put it down and I can't discount what a triumph that is for the book because the point of hard hitting contemporaries is for them to hurt you.
I was expecting the homophobia in this book to be rife, which it was, and honestly I've come to realise I'm not as comfortable with reading stories about homophobia as I thought I was. But what really caught me off guard is the misogyny. I don't really know why, it shouldn't have, but I guess I was just distracted by the main theme that I forgot that would be one too, and the misogyny explored in this book infuriated and upset me too.
This is not my culture, so there's certain things I don't feel comfortable commenting on, but I will say that I really liked that despite it showing the homophobia and misogyny that can exist within this culture, it also made a point to show that not everyone thinks in this way, and same as in any other culture there's good people and bad people, open minded people and narrow minded people. It's nuance like that that shows the importance of own voices representation.
In terms of the writing there's nothing wrong with this writing but it's also not a prose that stands out. It's simple, to the point, and it works.
I loved Rukhsana, which is good, and I also loved Shaila, Aamir, Irfan, Sara, Nani, and Sohail, and it was nice that there were so many characters I really loved
However, I cannot put into words how much I hated Ariana. Rukhsana deserves so much better than her, she is a terrible girlfriend to her throughout the book and I just could not stand her.
Anyway. I think this book is good. I think it's important. It impacted me emotionally. And I hated reading it