A review by zquill
Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan

4.0

I appreciated the view into another culture, and there was something about the rhythm of this story that soothed even as Jameela faces challenge after challenge. On the one hand, I liked that this was not a story of her having to compromise her beliefs and what her mother taught her, but I was very frustrated by how her obsession with surface-level appearances, both in terms of denying her own split lip and how others wear their head coverings, remained. The part at the end where a passing boy gropes Zeba and Jameela thinks about how she deserves it for not covering up more disgusted me. The narrative almost seems to posit her lack of critical thinking as a virtue, so while I agree with the message that being a good person trumps pettiness and vanity, Jameela's constant judgement of how others look and passive aggressive delight in others being brought down a peg end up coming across as hypocritical. I don't want her to be a doormat, but I do want her to own up to her own foibles rather than retreat into an unrealistically simplistic worldview all the time.