This is a classic coming of age story with an immigrant twist.

The story is told from the point of view of several young adults in current-day San Francisco. Anvar, Aamir and Zuha come from very loving, intact Pakistani families. In contrast Safwa/Azza's family history is full of heart breaking violence, untimely death and war.

There are so many crisscrossing story lines here. One of my favorites is the hilarious sibling rivalry between Anvar and Aamir. There is also an amazing friendship that grows into romance between Anvar and Zuha. And the most disturbing story line follows Safwa/Azza as she navigates between an overbearing, violent father and an abusive, malevolent, unwanted fiance.

As the story unfolds, it also touches on what it means to be an immigrant and a Muslim in 21st century America. In some ways this is the classic American story - the push/pull between the adopted culture and the culture from the country left behind, differing expectations between the immigrating parents/grandparents and the Americanization of the children's generation.

The author skillfully wove a lot of complex stories together and directed the readers sympathies toward every single character in the book, even the despicable ones.

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full cast audio (12 hours) / adult fiction
really well done - I love the complexities of the characters and how they interact with each other's varying ways of practicing (or not practicing) Islam. ( )

a little more than 2.5 stars. parts of this i really liked, and parts didn't really work. i kept being tugged between those feelings. for the depth of content, the light, sometimes humorous tone was surprising, and worked surprisingly well. by the end, i was much more invested and liked it more than for the first 3/4 or so.

i think, in the end, that anvar's story works for me, but safwa's doesn't. nor does the bringing together the two threads. there was no reason to tell both of these stories in one book. it would have been stronger for focusing just on either one of them, with anvar's being the stronger (although safwa's was the more dramatic). she could have featured in his story, so he could still learn all he needed to and do all the growing and understanding he needed to, but we didn't need her entire backstory.

i often like what masood is saying here, and even sometimes really like the way he's saying it, but so often this was just meh. his points about religious rigidity and stereotyping and blind faith are all interesting. i like the conversations about religion that this book is having with itself and with the reader.

if he'd given us just one of the character's stories he could have really drilled down even further, we could have really gotten to know the character well, and the book would have been a bit shorter. i think this was too long for what it was, and not in depth enough for what it could be. which is too bad, because dealing with these aspects of muslim life over the time period he is writing about is important and worthy of a book.

"The person you fall in love with is always slightly different from the person you need to stay in love with."

"The object of one's reverence is still just an object." ( )

Started better than it finished. I love the backgrounds of the characters and the descriptions of their lives in Pakistan/Iraq/Arghanistan. The book went round in circles towards the end with the love story being a bit silly when you compare it to the big world events they have in the background going on, and also trivial compared to Safwa's problems. I enjoyed it but wouldn't go recommending it. ( )

Great characters and plot. Slightly humorous tone.

> The moon was bright but distant, withdrawn from our affairs. It was waning, diminishing, and would soon disappear from the sky for a time. On the days when it wasn’t forced to hang in the sky, did it feel relieved, finally able to look away from the unending struggles, petty and terrific, that mark the lives of humankind, or did it just feel alone? ( )