Note: I received a review copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Note 2: I interviewed the author a few weeks ago, so I highly recommend reading the interview. 😀

My Summary: Against her parents’ desires, Asiya Haque goes for a walk alone in the woods with her crush, Michael, but what could have been a romantic getaway turns into something else completely when they come across a dead body. Asiya flees the scene at Michael’s behest, and then Michael goes missing himself and is accused of being the murderer. Asiya finds herself digging up clues to a murder mystery, a search that is not at all helped by a overly smug police officer who needs serious sensitivity training or her overly protective parents.

Review:

I went in with high expectations for this book, and by and large, it did not disappoint.

The decision to make this a first-person narrative was absolutely perfect. Asiya has a very distinctive character voice that made her so real to me. Her internal world is rich and complex and compelling. On top of that, she is downright hilarious. I lost count of the number of times that I busted out laughing because of something she said aloud or in her head. And though she’s not perfect, she does have a sense of justice and tries to do the best thing.

Asiya’s narration also brought to the fore an insider’s perspective on Islam. There are the congregations at her masjid, where you get to follow along with the communal prayers and witness the true foundations and tenets of the religion: peace, generosity, empathy, etc. There are also the interactions between Asiya and individual Muslims in her life. And of course, the internal dialogue she has with God as she faces her troubles.

From these passages, it’s clear that Asiya has an intimate relationship with her faith and God, but it’s complicated by other people’s cultural and individual biases that favor certain interpretations of God’s word. Through Asiya, her family, and her fellow Muslim community members, the author shows how Muslims are not a monolith. Even Asiya’s parents interpret certain lines from the Quran differently from one another and from their imam.*

Speaking of the parents, I really liked the way Asiya’s relationships with her parents was developed. Although they don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, they do care for one another and stand up for one another when it counts. Her parents were flawed but sympathetic characters, giving the scenes of family tension emotional weight because they’re more complicated than one side being right and the other wrong. I really loved her relationship with her father, who clearly has a soft spot for her. I have a similar relationship with my dad, and I wish there were more representations of such relationships when it comes to Asian dads in diaspora, who tend to be stereotyped as distant or controlling.

Asiya’s relationship with her younger brother was also a surprising positive. Although he definitely has his annoying brother moments, he still respects her, and Asiya in turn stands up for him when their parents disparage him over his academic performance. She’s the one to validate him and what he brings to the table in terms of talents and skills. This is so important in an Asian diaspora narrative because I think second generation kids internalize so many toxic beliefs about the value of grades, where we’re not just being encouraged to succeed in our education but are punished for every mistake made, to the point where we feel like we’re never good enough because of some numbers and letters.

There were a lot of little moments like this, little critiques of the harmful norms and practices around Asiya, including Islamophobia, body-shaming, and even the theft of indigenous children by the government. It was like an Easter Egg hunt for little nuggets of Keeping It Real.

The mystery elements didn’t take a backseat to all of this, of course. Between the different competing murder suspects and the obstacles to Asiya’s attempts at investigating, there was plenty of suspense to go around. The clues were laid out very cleverly to spring one on the reader when the dots are connected to reveal the whole picture. Maybe I’m not that great at piecing things together, but I definitely did not expect the answer to the whodunnit question.

And then at the end of the book, I got a cliffhanger that just ruined me. I’m eagerly anticipating the second book, Mutaweenies and Other Muslim Girl Problems!

For problematic content, I did notice issues with how Nate was portrayed with respect to his supposed OCD, which I wasn’t sure was intended to be clinical OCD/OCPD or just a personality thing that was described hyperbolically as OCD. However, I saw from Glaiza’s review that this part was edited out of the final edition, so that shouldn’t be an issue for most of you.

That issue aside, there were four other things. First was a place where Asiya’s remarks about Michael were heteronormative and exclusionary toward asexual people regarding his assumed sexual history. Second was the use of “opposite sex,” which excludes non-binary people. The third issue I picked up on was when Asiya said she heard a “male voice,” even though you can’t and shouldn’t assume someone’s gender based on how they sound. Better wording would have been to describe the pitch and texture of the voice without automatically gendering it as male or female. The last was the labeling of the culprit as “crazy,” which I found to be disappointing because there are ways to express that someone is terrible without stigmatizing mental illness.

*If you’d like to read some #ownvoices reviews from Muslim readers, here are a few:

Saadia Faruqi | Ayah Assem | Ruzaika Deen

Recommendation: Recommended for those looking for a good mystery that’s equal parts funny, heartfelt, and suspenseful.