Love, Hate & other filters

Love, hate & other filters

Author: Samira Ahmed

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Release date: 24 January 2018

Pages: 272 pages

R.R.P: $19.99

                                        

Maya Aziz dreams of being a film maker in New York. Her family have other ideas. They want her to be a dutiful daughter who wears gold jewellery and high heels and trains to be a doctor. She's also caught between the guy she SHOULD like and the guy she DOES like. But she doesn't want to let Kareem down and things with Phil would never work out anyway. Would they?

Then a suicide bomber who shares her last name strikes in a city hundreds of miles away and everything changes...

My review

Thoughts on the book: Love, hate & other filters is the amazingly eye opening, heartbreaking debut novel from Simira Ahmed. Our main character Maya Aziz is an American born Muslim who doesn't want to be the stereotypical Muslim daughter that her parents want her to be. She doesn't want to feel pressure to only date Muslims, and in turn marry one, and follow in her parent's footsteps and become a doctor. No Maya wants to be a film maker and attend film school in New York and kiss and go out with any boy she chooses, basically she wants to choose her own life. But when a terrorists attack happens in another town and the newscasters automatically think it's a Muslim who has done it the quite, simple life that Maya knows is turned upside down. Suddenly her parents clinic is under attack and the places she felt safe no longer seem to be and Maya now seems to be constantly looking over her shoulder for the next attack. But will the next attack cost Maya her life?

Massive thank you to Jessica from Allen and Unwin for this review copy of Love, hate and other filters it is most certainly in my Top Ten books this year. I found the book very eye opening in that I didn't know too much about some of the things that Muslims are facing since 9/11 and how cruel people can really be, because even though this is a work of fiction it most defiantly will be very true for some people. I'm finding myself drawn more and more to books that explore different races and the difficulties they face not only with people outside their race but also within their race, especially if they try to defy the odds. Books like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson to name some of my most recent reads have all explored these themes and I absolutely adored them. I most certainly will be picking up more of these books to broaden my horizons to what I might be not even considering is happening.

My main part of the book that I adored was our main character Maya. She fights her parents on everything because she believes what she is fighting for in life is worth it. 

-Going to film school for example, Maya believes she can make beautiful films that matter to people about everyday random things but her parents believe that her filming is a hobby she will grow out of and don't believe that they should waist there money on sending her to film school when she can go to medical school and take over their practice one day. But determined to prove them wrong she applies anyway and is excepted but that doesn't mean her parents will accept that she is worthy to go. 

-Another part of her life that she fights for is who to date. Since she was basically little her parents have been on the lookout for her future Muslim husband. Her parent's themselves are a product of an arranged marriage and they believe because their relationship has turned out so well that their daughter's will as well. Even when Maya starts dating Kareem her parents are so much more invested in his them Maya herself is and they go all out to please him and his family. Then when it doesn't turn out Maya is beLived to be the reason why it failed and that now she will never find a husband, she hasn't even finished high school. I found this part very eye opening and am so glad my parents were never that involved in my relationships.

There really aren't enough words to describe how making this book is. You all must go and pick up a copy and see for yourself. You certainly won't regret it.

Rating: 5/5