A review by booksontheknightbus
Skunk Girl by Sheba Karim
4.0
This book was a pleasant surprise. I was given this book from my mother in law a few years ago because our dog was sprayed by a skunk and then she terrorized our house... Okay back to Skunk Girl, I went in not knowing a thing about it, and came out loving it.
Nina Khan is a Muslim American girl growing up in a small town with her older sister and her two parents. Her mother is overprotective and her father is the towns doctor. Nina wants to be like all the other girls at her school, blonde, able to go out to parties, and also to date who she wants. She is also under the Shadow that her sister Sonia left before she ran off to Harvard.
The character growth in this book is excellent. Nina tends to grow on you because her character starts off pretty shy but by the end she has started to make decisions for herself. She learns that holding grudges are sometimes not warranted. Actually, this was one of the parts of the book that surprised me the most because it wasn't the stereo typical mean girl trope. I promise I won't give it away. (; I learned several things from this book, about the Muslim faith and a ton of words in Urdu, and for a fiction book to do that, it is quite incredible.
"Well, what is a good Muslim? Whose definition are you applying to that? In every religion people pick and choose what they want to follow. Look at Ma and Dad's own friends- a few of the aunties cover their hair, and a few of the aunties drink, some fast during Ramadan, some don't. You can't spend your life worrying about what other people will think.
If you are looking to read a book that tackles Ethnicity and the realism of daily life this book is for you. It was refreshing to read something so diverse and about an underrepresented group of people in literature.