The Love & Lies of Rukshana Ali

 The Love and Lies of Rukshana Ali by Sabina Khan, 336 pages.

Rukshana Ali is seventeen and trying desperately to balance the life she wants for herself with the life that would make her semi-conservative Muslim parents happy. But soon everything will be better, when she gets a little space on her own to be with her secret girlfriend and study engineering at CalTech. Everything explodes when her mother catches Rukshana kissing her girlfriend and goes ballistic, along with her normally very even-tempered father. Soon Rukshana is whisked away with her parents to their family in Bangladesh, where being gay is dangerous in addition to unacceptable (like it is in the Bangladeshi community back home in Seattle), and where they will stay until an arranged marriage is settled and their daughter is no longer "sick."

This book does a phenomenal job truly acknowledging how complicated Rukshana's existence is. She is very proud of her heritage, and she loves Bangladeshi culture and her family. She even cherishes visits to Bangladesh (with the major exception of current events). But at the same time the book does not shy away from acknowledging the huge problems in Bangladeshi culture, which has problems in the same way any culture has problems.

Mostly though, this book will break your heart. It is told in first person and I found, especially in the whole second half, my heart breaking for Rukshana and the things she was going through. It feels very emotionally honest, even if there's a small degree of suspension of disbelief in the plot. I will say, on a more positive note, the conclusion of the book did a good job putting my heart back together again. Definitely a good read if you're in for an emotional time.