A review by vagaybond
Courting Samira by Amal Awad

2.0

I wanted to like this more, but I feel like

the love triangle her family and friends were trying to set Samira up with by forcing Hakeem on her was just kind of cruel to them both and it was really anticlimactic when Samira and Hakeem had that convo where she was basically like "dude no" in no uncertain terms.

I felt like a lot of the things that Samira said in dialogue came as a surprise to me somehow, even when they seemed like essential character traits. I feel like the secondary characters were definitely fully fleshed out personalities and interesting, but I felt like more time could have been spent fleshing out their actual stories. A lot is referenced to have happened offscreen and it just kind of feels like I barely knew Samira. She didn't know herself either to be fair, but I didn't really get to truly see much of that growth, just the fallout of it.

I also feel like the insults about the emo boy felt like they were more wider judgement issues around men expressing femininity in general rather than about what Samira was attracted to, but that might be down to my own hyperawareness of this kind of thing as I do queer sensitivity reading for people sometimes.