Good Intentions: ‘Captivating and heartbreaking’ Stylist

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He almost wishes that there were something wrong with him, that he might have to go to the hospital after fainting somewhere, delivered to sterile white corridors, be told there are cancerous cells swarming his body. Really highlighted issues around self esteem and the prejudices and biases in the South Asian Societies. Rahat is the only person who can really read and calm him – so is this actually fair on Yasmina, either. Although this was a little bit in the “millennials and their painful love” genre (I seem to have read a lot of books in this area: “Open Water”, etc.

You fake being this heightened version of yourself, hide away the flaws and the cracks, make sure they can't see your bleeding heart and your trauma. Nur is always straining towards independence, but his brother Khalil chooses a university close to home; Rahat chooses a traditional option he’s scared Nur will decry; and Imran comes out as gay but courageously follows his heart and doesn’t choose the half-way option his parents present him with. It’s a book that takes a quite large topic—racism and colourism in the South Asian community—and examines it through Nur, a British Pakistani boy, who falls in love with Yasmina, a British Sudanese girl. Relationship dynamics are hard, and Kasim Ali emphasized this throughout the book, giving the reader different situations that feel so human and real that just make you want to stay for the ride. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination.As mentioned, I didn't really like the way the ending was executed but I was satisfied with where Yasmina and Nur's relationship went.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The book effectively makes the reader fall in love with how they come together, and Nur's constant poor decision making tears them apart along with the reader's heart . The right kind of brown family who have stayed up to watch the fireworks, waiting to see the celebration of the end of one Western year and the ringing in of a new one. A heart-wrenching and beautifully told debut novel about love, family obligation and finding your way. There is a weird paragraph about how two characters fight: because one says that Islam should evolve with the times and become modern?The backward-looking part of the book has the plot of conventional romance; the forward-looking part, which explores the aftermath of Nur's announcement (built largely around his dithery way of arranging a first meeting between his parents and Yasmina's), is fresher and more compelling.