Rania > Recent Status Updates

I know this goes against majority of the ethos Roy is communicating here, but someone needs to give this woman a gun oh my god, some of the legal and cultural hypocrisy she’s faced actually gives me hyperacidity. And this is a world famous novelist with the means to punch back. My heart rends for the stories I’m not seeing

Roy is exceeds in writing with generosity and humility, especially in reference to those she loves, and it protects them, us, and her from more nuanced truths. It feels odd to say as the inverse is usually true for a memoir, but I can’t help wishing she had a little more ego. The pulling of punches to acknowledge the viewpoints outside of her own are admirable, but come at the price of stifling her own voice.

Goes down smoother than other contemporary romance, but exposition is doled out with too heavy a hand and Jesus i feel beat over the head with The Point. But I miss DC and I’m listening to Corey Lingo and it’s perfect for the nostalgia that the DMV incites in me. Miss you Grosvenor-Strathmore.

Gag, she really got me with that plot twist

Oh Emily Henry, I love you like scam artists love trump

Emily Henry is for the tall girls and I love that!! I am, unfortunately, 5’3 so none of this resonates. I am happy to be an ally tho ✊🏼✊🏼

Also, the narrator can pronounce pièce de résistance perfectly, but any words or names in Urdu are to be butchered to the high heavens 🙂‍↕️

Some of the language gives me pause, it leaves little room for the reader to breathe, but moments in Habib’s writing sparkle like “yes, that’s what it’s like” such as when she describes eating the skin that forms on the top of boiling chai or the bubbles created by gender segregated spaces and the confusing and conflicting comfort that arises from them.

I really want this book to be good but the first few pages are not encouraging

This book feels like a hinge date

Emily Henry has the blueprint to my brain chemistry

A sex scene written by a man 🤢 free me

An interesting depiction of OCD

Also not to blind spot the author, but people who are looking to adopt are also asked to explain why they want to be a parent. But I do concede that none of these situations are a 1-to-1 conversion and it’s unfair to ask any of them to be.

The three characters feel like the Id, Ego, and Superego of the mental projection I have of the author. Especially in this scene where Katarina and Reese are talking about the distinction between reproductive injustice for trans women versus cis women of color. Katarina sounds like the admonitions the author would give herself and Reese, like the raw pain we want to allow ourselves and thus justify no matter what.

I feel so conflicted, this book can be so fun and hearing the perspective of Reese can both reveal a delicious complexity the author is capable of drawing as well as undermine insights the author is trying to establish, since they don’t hold up past the shock value.

Weird thesis on fetishization but okay

This book is absolutely breaking my heart

Was so fun in the beginning but I feel on my guard after reading reviews (which I should have learned at this point to never do in the middle of reading a book) that make me feel like I will have to choose whether to read this book as a cisgender bisexual or as a 3rd worlder from the “global south” sigh

Reading this with a friend, crazy concept

I feel like she’s writing an aesthetic rather than a narrative and I think both positively and critically of it.

How does she remember all of this

Stella will be a hard character to crack

I adore

This feels surface level

God I can’t stand this family.

I am frustrated with the way Pakistan is referred to in the novel