A review by llamallamacallurmama
Love From A to Z by S.K. Ali

3.75

**Most of my reviews contain detailed Content Notes (including CW/TW) sections, which may include spoilers and general tags.  I have tried to mark them appropriately, but please use caution.** 

3.75/5

Audio (S. K. Ali, Priya Ayyar and Tim Chiou)

* Summary:  Sent to stay in Doha, Qatar, with her aunt after an unfair suspension from school, Zayneb finds herself falling for Adam (and vice versa) while he hides a life-changing secret.

* Stats: CR, M/F, no sex/closed door epilogue, part of a series about the same couple, but stands alone.

* Notes: I really liked parts of this story, really didn't like parts, and my usual raging frustration with many CR YA stories was in full force - a lack of good parenting/adulting around the main characters. I also have a hard time with stories that heavily feature organized religion, but I knew that was going to be a theme going in. My big issue was that I genuinely don't know how I keep running into YA where the adults of the young people involved are so disconnected, uncaring, or harmful to their young people. I don't want paragons of parents or anything, but for crissake, would it kill you to sit on bed beside the angst ridden teen dealing with hard stuff (which you should know is happening because kids should be able to talk to their parents about hard stuff, which every single kid will have, seriously every single one) and $&@*ing parent them? WOULD IT KIIIIILL YOU?????? I'm 100% sure there's books out there where the adults aren't absolute toasters, but I'm not stumbling into them and it sets me right off and kind of ruins anything else in the book.  The story is political (though there's some glaring omissions, which irritated me), and fraught, but it was sweet - I sort of came away with a very HFN feeling though and the epilogue felt a bit handwave-y because it had to cover SO much ground.

OTT and Spoilery Content Notes:
Muslim MCs, school disciplinary issues, Islamophobia, xenophobia, description of an honour killing in a newspaper, hijabi FMC, racism, touch starved mmc, cyber bullying, West Indian (Caribbean)/Pakistani FMC, Chinese Canadian Mmc, death of grandparent (violent, briefly described), a lot of Harry Potter references, mmc with multiple sclerosis, religion (Islam), prayer, FMC is afraid of dogs, chronic illness with symptoms, brief description of several rapes/sexual torture (to random people, in news/research), medical care/hospital scenes, grief, grieving parent, ill parent (MS/pregnancy complications - in flashbacks), some parentification of mc, purity culture, brief description of deaths due to drone strikes, domestic abuse (mentioned, about a stranger), victim blaming (of strangers, by villain), 18m/f, Qatar