Welcome to Windows & Mirrors, where we feature books that provide us windows to lives outside our own and mirrors to our shared common human experiences.

Today we are featuring THE LOVE & LIES OF RUKHSANA ALI by Sabina Khan.

 Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali’s life is nearly perfect. She has great friends, good grades, and she and her very cool girlfriend are headed to Caltech in the fall. Even more exciting, Rukhsana has earned a full scholarship to study physics. There’s just one problem. Her very conservative Bengali-Muslim parents.

They expect her to go to nearby University of Washington and marry a Bengali young man. Rukhsana has no choice but to hide her true self and her girlfriend from them until she can escape to California. But then, her mother catches her kissing her girlfriend and ERUPTS. Her parents lie to her about her ailing grandmother and take her to Bangladesh to find her a suitable husband. While in Bangladesh, her parents sink to performing unthinkable acts to tame their daughter into the girl they want her to be.

Excuse me while I pick my heart up off the floor…

THE LOVE & LIES OF RUKHSANA ALI and its bold depiction of the tangled web of family, self-identity, friends, and intersectional diversity as it relates to LGBTQIA+ community and Bengali culture broke my heart countless times, but in the end carefully stitched it back together. Rukhsana Ali is so real to me that I want to text her to check in to see how things are going. 

The range of emotions Rukhsana navigates while dealing with her parents and her understandably confused girlfriend (who can’t fathom her parents’ actions) are spot on ––frustration, rage, love, understanding, compassion, loyalty. One thing that really stood out in this story is that we are all born into two lives- the one filled with expectations of us and the one we choose for ourselves. For some of us, we are lucky that there’s overlap, but for others, like Rukhsana, the gap is a huge chasm. It takes great courage and support from others to overcome such huge barriers and to prevent losing our true selves. Three cheers for brave Rukhsana who gathers strength throughout the story and helps us all understand the complexities of self-identity and its relationship to family. Rukhsana’s brother, cousin, and friends support her when she needs them most, so three cheers for all the allies in the world too.

Brilliantly executed, complicated plot, deftly-drawn characters you will come to love, and emotionally driven, THE LOVE & LIES OF RUKHSANA ALI is a book that should be on every YA reading shelf. It’s a story that will open understanding, inspire helpful dialogue, and change lives. I am looking forward to the next book by Sabina Khan. If you like books that speak truth, whisk you deeply into other cultures, and make you feel, this book is for you.

Due to hints about marital rape and incest (not described but alluded to in the story), this book may not be appropriate for young or sensitive readers.

Thank you to the author, Scholastic Press, and #kidlitexchange for the opportunity to read THE LOVE & LIES OF RUKHSANA ALI in exchange for my honest review.

THE LOVE & LIES OF RUKHSANA ALI releases on 1/29/19. Do yourself a favor and find it at your favorite bookstore or request it at your local library! Check out the preorder campaign.

Sabina Khan spent her teen years in Bangladesh and writes about Muslim teens who straddle cultures. By day, she’s an educational consultant. At night, she sings her heart out at karaoke. To learn more about Sabina, check out her website or connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.