Review: She Wore Red Trainers by Na'ima B. Robert

4.5 stars

She Wore Red Trainers: A Muslim Love Story is the story of Amirah and Ali, two eighteen-year olds trying to navigate their family, faith and future as they come of age in the gritty suburbs of South London, and I really enjoyed it. 

As a YA romance between two observant Muslim teens, there was relatively little interaction between Ali and Amirah, which I had seen other readers complaining about on Goodreads. For me, this was precisely what made it interesting and unique: they embodied a different set of norms, values and beliefs when it comes to interactions between genders. And it's not as though their lack of direct contact came at the expense of a relationship all together.  Just like most prospective couples in conservative cultures, they communicated through their friends and family members, and in small but meaningful gestures.

Amirah and Ali and their family members were wonderfully written, and the dynamics of their respective families formed a large part of the story. The imperfections of Ali's father and Amirah's mother as people and parents were expertly reflected in their children's wants, fears and motivations. For Amirah, her mother's four Islamic marriages and wholehearted reliance her husbands has made her gun-shy about relationships, and she vows never to marry. With overwhelming family responsibilities, she takes solace in art, even though she is resolved to do a more 'sensible' course at university. Meanwhile, Ali's father has lost his business and the family's house in Hertfordshire in the wake of his wife's death, and Ali and his brothers are struggling to come to terms with their new, much reduced, circumstances.

The dialogue throughout really reinforced the dual world the characters inhabit. The Muslim 'brothers' Ali hangs out with - including Amirah's brother Zayd - speak as though they just stepped out of an episode of Skins, but with Arabic phrases peppered throughout.  Amirah and her friends are the same, speaking like any other gaggle of British girls, except with the addition of a 'Mottie' (Muslim Hottie) scale that they use to rate boys.  Other reviewers disliked the author's use of jargon - both British and Islamic - but once I got used to it, I quite enjoyed it. To me, it reinforced the point that these characters were British teenagers with similar problems to any other British teenagers, only with the added dimension of their Islamic faith. In some instances, they had no problems reconciling the two, but in others, they struggled to establish what was halal and haraam in a world so different to that of the Quran and Hadith.  There was a glossary of Islamic/Arabic terms provided at the back, which I didn't find until I'd finished, but most things were decipherable by context anyway, and I realised I had learnt a lot a few days later, when I read an witty article about Islamic pick-up lines and understood some of the nuances.

In a lot of ways, She Wore Red Trainers contained the best of both YA and adult romance. Ali and Amirah's interactions were cute yet profound, leaving the reader wanting more, just as the characters themselves did.  One of the reasons I stopped reading YA is that I often had trouble believing that the relationships would last for long after the final page. However, in this novel, Ali and Amirah are entering into a relationship having already made a lifetime commitment, and this gave me the Happily Ever After that I'd normally find in adult romances. 

Recommendations: #WNDB Contemporaries

I don't know how everyone else is going with their #WNDBChallenge, but I've found searching for diverse books can be very time-consuming (even if it's lots of fun).  I wrote up some recommendations earlier in the year, but since then I've thought of many others, so I've listed a few contemporaries that would make very goods #WNDB reads, and are just good reads in general.

Party Lines by Emma Barry
Lydia Reales is many things: female, Latina, pro-choice and...a Republican.  Not just a Republican voter, but a Republican staffer.  For Michael Picetti, working on the opposing Democrat campaign, Lydia's completely off-limits and on the wrong side of the political spectrum, but he finds himself intrigued all the same.  Party Lines is a deft, honest and unbiased look at the way the way the US primaries and larger political system operate.  Lydia's position as a fish-out-of-water is handled beautifully; she tries to do her job and fight for what she believes in, even as she realises that, to those around her, she's merely a token, to be wheeled out when she's needed and be quiet when she's not.

Lighting the Flames by Sarah Wendell
Wendell wrote this book because she was dismayed that, despite a thriving sub-genre of Christmas romances, there were next to no romance novels set around Hanukkah.  Overall, it was a sweet, reasonably chaste novel about two long-time friends who serve as counsellors at a Jewish camp, and I found the hero particularly likeable and empathetic.

Just Not Mine by Rosalind James
Benched with a broken finger, rugby player Hugh Latimer suddenly finds himself the full-time carer for his small half-brother and sister.  He is forced to move in with them, and now spends most of his time trying not to notice the attractiveness of their next-door neighbour, Maori soap-actress Josie Pae Ata.  Several other of James' Escape to New Zealand books contain Maori protagonists, including Just for You and Just Good Friends, which I would also recommend.

The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen
When Corey, left wheelchair-bound after an ice hockey accident in high school, meets Hartley, a broken-legged hockey player living across the hall, they bond instantly. But Hartley's got a girlfriend, and even if he didn't, Corey's convinced he'd never want the girl who can't even walk. The Year We Fell Down provided a raw look at the way we treat those with disabilities, without compromising the characters' relationship.   

Review: Breathless for You by Elizabeth Anthony

4 stars

Breathless for You is set in 1921, amidst a Britain still reeling from the Great War, caught between the old and the new.  It's an anxious time, and this book captures that perfectly.

The heroine, Madeline, is the ward of the Duke of Belfield, but her past life in France has left her at odds with her aristocratic surroundings. Desperate to avoid being the source of gossip and insinuation that could affect her guardian's standing in society, she removes herself to the Duke's country estate, where she is irresistibly drawn to the mysterious gamekeeper, Nathan Mallory. The two begin an affair, but their growing relationship is threatened by the secrets they are both keeping, and by the manipulative Lady Beatrice, the widow of the former heir to the dukedom. With Belfield away peacekeeping in Ireland, it is up to Madeline to thwart Beatrice's attempts to ruin both her reputation and that of Sophie, the Duke's common-born love. 

Breathless For You was a compulsive read. The reasons behind the characters' actions were revealed in stages, encouraging a 'oh, just one more chapter, until I find out XYZ' mentality. These gradual revelations made Madeline a complex and interesting heroine, confident in some ways and diffident in others. The conventions of the genre usually provide the reader with a 'tortured hero', but Madeline was a 'tortured heroine' poignantly fighting against the demons of her past. Nathan starts off as a fairly stock-standard hero, but as he gains a greater understanding of Madeline's situation and he begins to share his own secrets, he too becomes an interesting and engaging character.

But while I enjoyed the hero and heroine, I can't say the same for the other characters. Don't get me wrong, Beatrice made an excellent villain and the book would not have worked without her constant devilry, but I found the cruelty and sordidness that defined her and most other female characters to be off-putting at times, never mind the fact that she never received her comeuppance. From a stylistic perspective, I understand; it is a dark erotic romance, and even if it were not, the post-war setting requires a level of moral nihilism. Nonetheless, as someone who reads romance because I like the happily-ever-after, I found it marred my enjoyment of the book. It's a personal quirk, I know, but it's one that I feel many romance readers share.

Overall though, Breathless for You was an interesting and well-constructed novel, made particularly memorable by the seldom-used setting of post-WWI England.  

Review: Fighting Silence by Aly Martinez

3 stars
EDIT: Changed this rating from 3.5 to 3 stars. Must have been feeling generous that day.

Some of my favourite romance novels of all time feature the 'I've loved you my whole life' trope, so I was excited to read Aly Martinez's Fighting Silence, particularly as it features a unique hero, Till Page, who is going deaf from a congential hearing problem. 

The day Till finds out about his hearing defect is the same day he meets shy, artistic Eliza. They're both kids from the wrong side of the tracks with absentee parents, and from then on they look after each other. Till convinces himself that Eliza can never be his, but at eighteen they spend a night together and everything changes. Till disappears, and Eliza moves on with her life.  But Till can't stay away for long, and soon he's back with a fledgling boxing career and two brothers in tow. He doesn't want to do anything to endanger their friendship again, but all Eliza has ever wanted is Till, and she's not going to let his fear get in the way.  

Fighting Silence was different and touching, but while it was enjoyable, I was a bit conflicted about how to rate it. If you had asked me throughout the first half, I would have told you unequivocally that it was 5-star material, but I felt as though the second half let it down. The use of time-jumps worked well to set up Till and Eliza's relationship, allowing us to see a few formative incidents from their shared youth, but once they were together it prevented the reader from appreciating their growth as characters.  

Perhaps because I started to lose my sense of connection to the story in the second half, I also found the ending was very convoluted and took away from one of its major themes. I don't think it's any great spoiler to say that, about halfway through the book, Till becomes completely deaf. His early attempts to deal with this are very poignant. The way Till looks after his two little brothers is very endearing, making his realisation that they may suffer the same fate particularly heartbreaking. When he becomes permanently withdrawn and it starts to have consequences on his relationships with others, Eliza basically tells him to suck it up. After a time jump in which Till flicks his internal self-pity switch to 'off' and everyone around him magically learns to sign, his deafness is pushed to the side in favour of a lot of random new complications, and it's here that I start to wish the book took a different tack.

While I would be just as dissatisfied if the book gave the impression that becoming deaf is the be-all-and-end-all, it would have been nice to see Till learning to navigate his disability more, and to have had more realism in this process. I mean, everyone - regardless of ability - has days when they feel sorry for themselves, or have to make a concerted effort to remind themselves how lucky they are, and I feel like the quick change from Till underwent from 'angry at the world' to 'this is my lot now' delegitimised this constant and ongoing struggle.

These things brought Fighting Silence down, but it was still a enjoyable, well-written romance.

Review: Kulti by Mariana Zapata

5 stars

All Sal Casillas wants to do is play soccer. It's her life, and if she works hard enough, she can help her team to the top of the Women's Premier League. The last thing she wants is a distraction, especially when it takes the form of Reiner Kulti, retired soccer icon and Sal's new assistant coach. As a girl, Sal plastered her room with his pictures, but the man who watches her from the side of the field each day is nothing like her childish imaginings.  He is, in short, a bit of a bastard. On the rare occasions he speaks, it's to put someone down. Sal's the only one brave enough to tear a strip off him, and when she does, a tentative friendship emerges. As Sal gets to know the man beneath the tight-lipped and intimidating exterior, she realises he might be an egotistical, arrogant, stubborn pain in the ass, but he's also vulnerable and alone.  

Mariana Zapata's Kulti was atypical; longer than most romance novels, and with protagonists who had a platonic relationship for the majority of the book.  But the pay off was definitely worth it. Watching Sal and Kulti circle around each other was an engaging and refreshing change from compressed storylines and insta-love.

Pulling off a book of this length wouldn't have been possible without excellent characterisation. Sal was wonderfully developed, kind but assertive. Perhaps more importantly, she was witty and funny, a necessary foil to the taciturn Kulti. I also really appreciated that Sal wasn't reduced to a zero-sum tomboy stereotype.  She played soccer and worked in landscaping, but also loved 'feminine' stuff like face masks.  

And Kulti.  I didn't want to like him, I really didn't. He could be insensitive, but he was also a little bit like a lost puppy who followed a child home from the park and refused to leave. He was an enticing and interesting mix of contradictions and in the end, his dedication to Sal and her career won me over. I try to keep my reviews from being too fan-girly, but honestly, the way Kulti called Sal Schnecke got me every time.  Gotta love a good German endearment.

In fact, in light of the effect this book had on me, I'm going to issue a caveat emptor: if you buy Kulti, you may find yourself daydreaming your way through the morning commute and end up using your data allowance to google the German soccer team.  It was a sacrifice I was more than willing to make, but if you are looking to invest minimal time and effort in a book, save Kulti for another day.

Review: Captive Bride by Bonnie Dee

3 stars

Captive Bride by Bonnie Dee is a short and sweet historical romance set in San Fransisco in 1870.  Huiann was given away by her parents in China, with the expectation that she would be taken to America and marry a wealthy Chinese-American businessman.  But after a long steamship trip, she  quickly realises their naivety. She is not to be a wife, but a whore. When Huiann escapes from the luxurious brothel where is imprisoned, she is taken in by Alan, a local shopkeeper. Despite their lack of a common language, he offers her a position as his housekeeper and they build a relationship.  

I did enjoy Captive Bride, but I couldn't help but feel that it never really achieved its potential. It was largely memorable for its setting.  Having the two protagonists not being able to communicate in a shared language is always tricky, but I felt like the relationship between Alan and Huiann was rushed, and neither's characterisation was as strong as I would have liked. To me, this kept it in the realm of 'good' rather than 'excellent'. I also have some doubts about Huiann's protrayal, which I can't really put into words.

While I may have my doubts about the central relationship, the setting of the novel was deftly drawn and made for fascinating reading; I found the author's note that outlined the context of Chinese-American relations in this time to be one of the book's most interesting parts. 

Review: The Shameless Hour by Sarina Bowen

5 stars

Sarina Bowen's The Shameless Hour popped up on my Amazon in the 'New for You' section, and I was instantly drawn in by the beautiful cover:

Even more intriguing was the fact that, out of 16 reviews, there was only one person who hadn't given it 5 stars. I bought it to find out what kind of super-book could manage that, and stayed up waaay too late to finish it. The madness continued when I mass-downloaded the rest of the Ivy Years series, which I devoured during Sydney's so-called Storm of the Century. (Coincidentally, a century is also the estimated time before my teleco gets my internet working again. I think they must be using hairdryers to get the water out of the cables or something.)

But moving away from my #firstworldproblems and back the the topic at hand, I think it's fair to say that I was very impressed with The Shameless Hour. The last time I remember being this engrossed in a New Adult book was Trade Me, which was the not only the first review I posted on this blog, but also the impetus for starting it. As with Trade Me, it was the layers of the characters - and the way these embodied the struggle of the modern, diverse world - that I really loved.

The protagonists, Rafe and Bella, live in the same building at the prestigious (but fictional) Harkness College. The night they meet properly, Bella invites Rafe - devastated and drunk after finding out his girlfriend has been cheating on him with some Rolex-wearing jerk - into her room. One one-night stand later, Rafe's lost his virginity. Bella, not understanding why he's so awkward after their encounter, decides to avoid him. And she does a pretty good job, until Rafe's the person who discovers her at the lowest point in her life. She's been drugged by a frat and had profanities written across every inch of her skin in permanent marker. Even worse, it's all across the internet.  Realising Bella has no-one else, Rafe steps up, refusing to let her live out the rest of the semester from beneath her duvet cover.

As that brief rundown of the plot suggests, The Shameless Hour was refreshingly different from the bulk of romances, New Adult or otherwise. For one, Bella's no shrinking violet of a heroine. She goes after what she wants and her transformation from sex-positive feminist to reclusive hermit and back again is supremely affecting. Rafe is such a caring and thoughtful hero, there's a jaded part of me that wonders if he's more closely related to leprechauns and unicorns than your average college-aged guy.

Rafe is not actually descended from little green men; he's of Dominican extraction, and no one ever heard of a Dominican leprechaun.  But his ethnic background isn't just a sop thrown in to appeal to a wider market. It's integral to his character, the reason he's still a virgin at twenty.  His mother, having being knocked up and then abandoned by Rafe's dad at the tender age of nineteen, brought him up with the old tenet of if-you-don't-want-children-don't-have-sex, as well as a healthy respect for women.  It is partly Rafe's experience of what happens to good Catholic girls who fall on hard times that makes him so compassionate toward Bella.  The result is an interesting reversal of one of romance's most long-standing and pervasive tropes: the sexually experienced man and virginal woman.

The Shameless Hour was a truly 21st century novel. It tackles some serious social issues, but does so in a way that is remarkably un-judgemental and keeps the reader engaged. Even as the slut-shaming Bella was put through made my heart break, another part of me was going 'yes, finally someone's talking about this stuff, making it clear that we don't bring it on ourselves, that it's a problem and not just our cross to bear'.  I honestly can't stress enough how much it meant to me to read about a heroine who was as sure of herself and her beliefs, and in a stunning example of why we need these characters who challenge the assumption that women who are not 'pure' have no worth, the very day I read this book Avengers actors Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans called another (female) character in the movie a 'slut' and a 'whore'.  They were, of course, called out and both issued 'apologies' which basically told everyone offended that they needed to learn to take a joke. 

Such is life, but maybe one day - if we have more great books like The Shameless Hour - things will be different.