Written in the Stars

by Aisha Saeed

Naila's conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: You may choose what you want to be when you grow up, but we will choose your husband. Dating, even a friendship with a boy, is forbidden. So when Naila falls in love with Saif, a Pakistani-American classmate, and tries to date him on the sly, her parents are livid. They insist on a trip to Pakistan to visit their relatives and explore their roots. But several weeks into what she's been led to believe is a family vacation, Naila suddenly learns the real reason for the trip - her parents have found a 2 suitor and they are determined Naila will marry him. Naila is aghast. Her only hope of escape is Saif, who swore he would do anything for her. But will it be too late by the time he gets to her? And was this destiny written in the stars? Or can she make her own destiny.

• ISBN10: 0147513936
• ISBN13: 9780147513939
• Publish Date: 3 May 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 29 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Speak
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780147513939

Reviews

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Trigger warning: This book contains rape.

I've been really looking forward to Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed for such a long time now, but I finished it feeling really disappointed.

The topic Written in the Stars covers is a really serious one. Forced marriage is abhorrent, and so I was expecting this story to have me in floods of tears. It didn't. Why? Because I didn't know any of the characters. I can tell you that Naila was planning to go to college to study to become a doctor. Other than that, I can't tell you a single thing about her, not her hobbies, not what she likes to do in her spare time, nothing. I also don't have a clue about Saif, the guy she is in love with. I know nothing about either of them, and so I didn't feel their romance. To be honest, I don't really know anything about any of the characters. For me, they all felt so very two dimensional, and when that is the case, I find it very difficult to care. I don't mean that harshly, I don't mean I didn't care, but that as I didn't feel like the characters were real people, I wasn't emotionally invested in their story. I felt distanced from the story. Terrible things happened, but I was only very mildly affected by what I read. This is a book about forced marriage - (show spoiler)[Nailia isn't told that all these dinner parties and meetings for tea are to find her a husband, and when she does find out and tries to escape, she is locked in her room, force-fed, an d then drugged for days until after she is married, and then she is raped] (hide spoiler) - and with all that happens to her, I should have been raging, I should have been brokenhearted, I should have felt so much despair, but because of how this book was written, I was not.

Not only are the characters two dimensional in my opinion, but the story felt so rushed. Although it is 277 pages long, the font is pretty big. Time flies inbetween chapters, and before you know it, a month has gone by, then several weeks more. Things happen, then it's several weeks after they happened, and I struggled to keep up with the speed of the book. I'm not sure, even if the characters were more developed, that this book would have as much affect on me, because everything happens so fast. And there's so very little description of anything. The story just didn't feel real to me. I couldn't fully imagine the people or the setting, and I'm being whisked through things before I have time to fully realise what I'm reading.

I didn't like this book. I'm afraid it just wasn't for me. I didn't feel the true horror of what forced marriages are, even with all that I read. I just don't think this book was executed well. And that bothers me, because it's such an important subject. But saying all this, there are lots of people who love Written in the Stars, people who were more affected by the story than I was. So maybe read a few more reviews before deciding whether or not to read this book. Don't base your decision on my review alone.

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: Very little about Written in the Stars surprised me because it's based on the realities of arranged and forced marriages. Every now and then articles are published in the news about related atrocities, and I've had to read up a little as well during my undergrad studies. Regardless, that doesn't mean I was any less horrified.

While arranged marriages alone already are an inconceivable concept to many, I've had friends in the past who grew up knowing that that would be their fate. Arranged marriages in themselves are cultural practices and traditions that aren't necessarily better or worse than marrying for love. Who has the right to judge cultural values? Forced marriages seem even further removed.

What many don't realise is the extent to which forced marriages can destroy lives and futures. Written in the Stars deals with precisely this — the extremities that underscore this practice. Amidst the heartbreaking sequence of events other cultural aspects of Pakistan were woven into the narrative, particularly the food, language, clothes and familial relations. Still, I wish there had been more of that. On the whole, I think Written in the Stars also would have benefitted from being a longer book with greater depth and exploration of the various characters.