Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan, is a pleasing, low key romance–much more low key than her debut novel If You Could Be Mine. Leila knows her crush on girls would devastate her Iranian born parents…confirmed by the fact that a neighbor disowned their son when he came out. As a result, she can’t tell her parents or her perfect sister, Nahal, the apple of her parents’ eyes, so she thinks. She doesn’t want to be disowned, unloved.

When a new, beautiful girl, Saskia, transfers to her school and shows interest in Leila, she’s ecstatic. She can’t stop thinking about her, her looks, the smell of her hair, the feeling as their arms brush together. She has high hopes that Saskia will become her girlfriend. But Saskia is erratic, sometimes encouraging, sometimes conniving and sometimes hurtful.

At school, all students must have an extracurricular activity. Since Leila’s no athlete, it takes little encouragement from Saskia to convince Leila to drop soccer and try out for the school play together, Twelfth Night. Although she doesn’t get a part (and Saskia does), Leila agrees to work backstage where she meets Tanya, Simone and Christine, the rumored stereotypical ‘backstage lesbians’.

While all of this is going on, Leila reconnects with a childhood friend, Lisa Katz, who had migrated to the ‘in crowd’ at school, leaving the Lisa/Leila friendship in the dust.

(Possible spoiler) I’ll admit that parts of the story are predictable, as is the ending (but it’s the ending you want). But that doesn’t detract from this sweet story. Leila is like any sixteen year old in the throes of love, regardless of whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual love, whether you’re a guy or a girl. Her insecurities about romance will resonate with most teens, since both genders go through the heartbreak of romance at some point in their young lives.

Additionally, we all think we know our siblings, only to find out they’re totally different than our image of them. Nahal is no exception.

And finally, the book reinforces the unconditional love that a parent has (should have) for a child.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel will make any romantic feel good, which is certainly how a crush should feel.

Read Full Post »

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

It boggles my mind that a country could accept (and even pay for) sex change operations yet consider homosexuality a sin. Apparently there is nothing in the Bible that says a person can’t change the gender of his/her physical body, but there is something that says having sexual relations with a person of the same sex is a mortal sin.

Sara Farizan in her debut novel, If You Could Be Mine makes this abundantly clear as seventeen year old Iranians Sahar and Nasrin are in love but must keep their feelings secret. It comes as quite a shock, especially to Sahar, when it is announced that Nasrin’s parents have promised her hand in marriage to a doctor, Reza. The wedding is in three months. Sahar cannot think of living life without Nasrin and while Nasrin says they can still see each other after the wedding, Sahar knows it can never be.

Sahar contemplates all options to cancel the wedding and claim Nasrin as her own, including undergoing the long and painful sex changes operations. She is introduced to transgenders through her cousin, Ali, who is gay. None of these people say life is easy after the changes, but at least they are in the body they should have been born into.

Sahar wonders whether her father, who has been in a depression for the several years since Sahar’s mother died, would even notice if one day she came home sporting a beard. Or would he disown her?

This is certainly a new and relevant twist on teenage sexuality. Sahar and Nasrin are two distinct personalities, one serious and determined, the other flighty and always in need of attention. So, it comes as no surprise, although in my mind it was a bit far-fetched, that Sahar should consider drastic measures to keep Nasrin. Farizan also brings up the question: would someone who loves you romantically as a woman, feel the same way if you were a man? Good question!

While, if you read this blog regularly, you know my absolute favorite books on this subject, If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan is certainly up there on the list. It is an absorbing read.

Read Full Post »