Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel: A Novel

by Sara Farizan

With the heart of Judy Blume and the wit of Alison Bechdel, Sara Farizan brings the authenticity and humor that distinguished her award-winning debut novel, If You Could Be Mine, to the story of Leila—a high school junior balancing the discoveries of coming of age, the demands of coming out, and the drama of high school love triangles. Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is a relief. As an Iranian American, she’s different enough; if word got out that Leila liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when beautiful new girl Saskia shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. As she carefully confides in trusted friends about Saskia’s confusing signals, Leila begins to figure out that all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to
be, and some are keeping surprising secrets of their own.

• ISBN13: 9781616202842
• Publish Date: 7 October 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 23 November 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Algonquin Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 3.5 stars

I really loved Leila and her personal struggle came across as very honest. She was just trying to figure out who she was, and worried about disappointing her parents or being cut off by her parents. I was really happy with the way Farizan handled her family situation. Leila's mother was a star, and I loved her to pieces. I also liked how supportive her sister, her teacher, and friends were. I like being surprised in good ways. To be honest, I could have done without Saskia. Sort of hated her, which I believe was the intention, and also not sure what she really had to offer as far as the overall story. Once the real romance began, I was extremely happy. There was sort of a grandish type gesture to reveal the feelings, and then there was just a ton of honesty that added to the awww-sweet quotient.

Overall: A very enjoyable coming of age/coming out story, which was punctuated with a heartwarming romance.

[nannah]

Ugh, I don't know how to feel about this book! I don't know what to think.
On one hand, it's incredibly diverse, and that's great! But then again, Sara Farizan doesn't always handle that diversity well, which is . . . not so great. :/

Book content warnings (whew here we go):
homophobia/biphobia/lesbophobia
transphobia
homophobic & biphobic stereotypes
lesbophobic slurs
forced coming-out
Jewish slurs
sexual harassment
cissexism
unhealthy relationships
(and probably more . . . )

A high-school junior, Leila is a student at a preppy academy, a 1st generation Persian immigrant, and unknown to anyone, a lesbian. Life is hard enough already without anyone knowing about that.

But when new-student Saskia enters her life, Leila is immediately smitten and has a harder time hiding herself from everyone, including herself. But Saskia brings with her a whole world of drama, and Leila wonders if Saskia's even a good person, if her feelings for her are real or superficial, and what it really means (re: title) to have a crush.

So, what this book does really well:
- the main character dealing with her emotions/becoming familiar with her sexuality, especially coming from a traditional Persian family, etc.
- the relationship between Leila and her family (this is done SO well)
- the relationship between Leila and Lisa (I won't get into this too much to not spoil anything, but it's very sweet)
- basically the main and lots of secondary characters are done Very well, and it's so lovely to witness
- that ending! it wraps up in such a satisfactory way, that I momentarily forgot everything I disliked about it and just reveled in that beautiful ending :'))

What this book . . . really doesn't do well: (and it's a lot)
- bi representation
--- Lisa, a bi character, vehemently denies the label of bi, instead just wanting to be "____sexual", and haven't we all seen that 1000 times in the media? Everyone hates the b word!!
--- Saskia. We don't know her sexuality. We assume she's straight ("I can't even look at my own vagina in a mirror! ew!"(cissexism warning), but then again she looks at Leila with lust in her eye, and goes out of her way to continue to kiss her and pursue her, so . . . is she curious? Does she have internalized hobophobia? We don't know. But it DOES seem like she's falling into the evil, promiscuous, and over-sexualized bisexual stereotype that needs to die. :/

- transphobic stereotypes
--- Toward the end of the book, Leila and the only gay character team up to help middle school students put on Cinderella with a twist: Cinderella is . . . non-gender conforming? At least that's what they said. But . . . when we actually see the play, the character of Cinderella is simply performed by a boy in a dress who's speaking in falsetto for laughs. That's . . . simple transphobia there, not anything non-gender conforming. The book even specified it was done for humor, so . . .

- bad representation of lgbt ppl in general
--- The only gay character is someone named Tomas, who's a very flamboyant man. Now that's not bad, because many gay men are flamboyant, but Tomas enjoys being a straight woman's accessory, openly hates "hardcore lesbians", and lives only for other people's drama without having any other character--or character development. He has no other personality, and even says he wants/has no other connections than what will give him drama.
--- There's a group of stagehands Leila meets who she (and everyone else) assumes are lesbians. She has this superior attitude throughout the entire book of "not like other lesbians" and even goes as far to say "will I end up like them? will I date someone like them??". AKA, lesbians who are feminists, lesbians who don't shave their legs, lesbians who aren't very feminine, etc. I don't know what Sara Farizan has against lesbians, but what the hell.

Anyway, it's sooo tough to rate this book, or even like it? Because there was so much that I didn't like about that made it tough to enjoy. Even if there was much I did like about it!

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I've wanted to read Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan for quite a while, so when it came up in Dahlia Adler's Book Club for February, it was the perfect chance to pick it up. Tell Me Again is a sweet, lovely story, but it left me feeling only lukewarm.

Leila has so far managed to keep her sexuality a secret from everyone, something she's pleased about, because she doesn't need any more attention than she already gets for being Iranian American. But when the beautiful Saskia starts at her school and wants to be her friend, Leila finds it really difficult to hide the fact that she now has a crush. When it looks like Saskia might fancy her too, Leila finds herself going along with whatever Saskia wants to do, no matter the trouble it will get them in. Leila's former best friend Lisa, now part of the popular crowd, has been struggling to come to terms with her brother's death, and Leila reaches out to try and comfort her. Slowly their friendship begins to recover, and she finds, when she signs up for the school play, that there are friends she never thought she would have got on with to be found there as well. Her new friends are there for her when Saskia goes from hot to cold and back again, but how will her family react if they discover she's a lesbian?

For a book that has a fair amount happening, Tell Me Again didn't really feel like it. Leila is dealing with her feelings for Saskia and Saskia's strange behaviour, getting to know her new friends as well as keeping her current ones from being annoyed with her, and worrying about how her traditional, conservative Iranian parents will treat her if they ever found out about her sexuality. A lot is happening, but I was thinking for most of the book, "When is something going to happen?" The pace of the story stayed steady, no matter what was happening; there were no real highs of excitement or lows of fear for me as a reader, despite Leila having both for herself. Farizan's writing style kept me gripped, but the pace of the story left me wanting more.

Saying that, Tell Me Again was a really interesting story. It has a great cast of characters; Tess and Greg, Leila's current friends, Taryn, Christina and Simone, the theatre tech crew, and Tomas who is made an understudy and stage manager with her, and Lisa, Leila's former best friend. Then there's Saskia who is fascinatingly vile. She's a bully and she's terrible, but I have a feeling she has her own issues; it would be interesting to see her story. What I loved about this book was how Leila making new friends with the tech crew, Tomas, and Lisa didn't take away from her friendships with Tess and Greg. All her friends are important to her in different ways, and no-one gets left behind. The only reason Leila tries to keep Tess and Greg from being annoyed with her is because Tess fancies Greg, and Greg fancies Leila, and it can make things awkward.

I found learning the little we did about Persian culture really interesting; the party and the wedding, where a large group of Iranian people got together, were fascinating, but we learnt more simply from Leila's home life. For the main, it came through in Leila's concern about how her parents would react to her sexuality - she doesn't just have to come out to her parents, she has to come out to Iranian parents, who come from a country that have very strict views on sexuality. She already knows a mother and father from her Iranian community kicked out their son when they found out he was gay, and she's terrified of what will happen to her if her parents find out.

"Lisa, you don't understand. It would hurt them. I've already disappointed them. My father is desperate for me to be a doctor. They'd probably kick me out. You know where they're from, being gay is illegal? They imprison people over there for feeling like I do! Sentence them to death sometimes." (p212-213)

I have to say I struggled a little with the main romance of this book, but to discuss it would spoil the story, so look or don't look.

Lisa comes out and tells Leila she's always had feelings for her. It's almost like now there's another option for Leila rather than being on her own, and suddenly she's interested, where she didn't even consider Lisa beforehand. She didn't fancy her, didn't think she was attractive, nothing. They weren't really friends, then they kind of were, then Lisa tells her the truth about why she stopped being her friend, and now all of a sudden, Leila has feelings for Lisa. It just seemed so conveniant. I never really believed how Leila felt for Lisa as their relationship developed, because it just came out of nowhere.

The romance is really sweet, though; lovely and not too heavy. A pretty light f/f romance. I just struggled with it.

Although I was disappointed with Tell Me Again, I did find the Persian culture and the beliefs regarding sexuality interesting, so I'm really looking forward to giving Farizan's first book a go, If You Could Be Mine a read, a f/f romance set in Iran.

[Angie]

I think that anyone who has ever had a crush, no matter what you're sexual orientation, and has felt like they don't fit in for whatever reason will be able to relate to Leila. Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel is all about Leila figuring herself out. She knows she's gay, but isn't out yet. She already feels like she sticks out at her mostly white high school, and her parents are traditional Persians who want her to be a doctor even though Leila is failing science, so there's no way she can add being a lesbian on top of that. Then Saskia transfers to her school and it becomes harder to keep her feelings in check.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel was really great! Leila is such a down-to-earth narrator and it's so easy to get caught up in her life. I also had to nod and think "Yep, I remember feeling like that" a lot. The author totally captured crushing perfectly. I'm sure we've all had a crush on someone who we thought was just the greatest, and then maybe we were making progress with them, but it was all in our head. Or maybe it wasn't all in our head, and they were just a jerk. It's clear from the beginning that Saskia is not a good match for Leila, but hormones! Saskia really is the worst though.

While a lot of the story is Leila freaking out about coming out or staying in, and being judged and figuring out what she wants to do with her life, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel is also pretty darn funny. I really did laugh out loud in places, because it's funny 'cause it's true! Especially if you know Persian people. I love the parts about the food and how they want to feed everybody. It made me hungry. My BFF needs to bring me some food ASAP! Also, Leila's friend Lisa just has this dry humor that I totally get it! I loved her!

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel just gave me feelings. It's not all gloom and doom like If You Could Be Mine. The tone of this one is much lighter and overall a feel good read despite Saskia being a nutjob and worrying about if Leila's parents are going to accept her or not. There's also friendship and theater! And caring, involved adult figures! And family! And food!

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.