The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali

by Sabina Khan

A timely and honest coming-of-age story that explores the complicated
relationship between identity, culture, family, and love.


Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her
conservative Muslim parents' expectations, but lately she's finding
that impossible to do. She rolls her eyes when they blatantly
favour her brother and saves her crop tops and makeup for parties
her parents don't know about.

If she can just hold out another few months, Rukhsana will be out
of her familial home and away from her parents' ever-watchful eyes
at Caltech, a place where she thinks she can finally be herself.
But when she is caught kissing her girlfriend Ariana, her devastated
parents take Rukhsana to Bangladesh, where everything she
had been planning is out of reach.

There, immersed in a world of tradition and arranged marriages, Rukhsana
finds the perspective she's been looking for in her grandmother's
old diary. The only question left for her to answer is:
Can she fight for the life she wants without losing her family in
the process?

• ISBN13: 9781407194578
• Publish Date: 7 February 2019 (first published 29 January 2019)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 25 June 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Scholastic
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

Proceed With Caution:

This book contains homophobia, child abuse, forced marriage, death, rape, drugging, and child marriage.

The Basics:

The Love & Lies or Rukhasana Ali is narrated by seventeen-year-old Rukhsana as she's preparing to leave her home in Seattle to attend Caltech with her girlfriend. At least that is the plan. Rukhsana's parents are very strict and conservative, so they have no idea that she's a lesbian and she hopes they don't find out until she's out of the house. Unfortunately, they do find out and take her to Bangladesh to find her a husband.

My Thoughts:

The Love & Lies or Rukhasana Ali made me furious. I was seriously so mad while reading this, but I couldn't put it down. Rukhsana's parents' behavior is inexcusable. They say they're doing all of this out of love and for her own good and to save her reputation and theirs, but OMG. Holy crap. Rukhsana repeatedly tells her friends and her girlfriend that she can't come out because of her parents and they just assume she's over-exaggerating. But even Rukhsana didn't know to what extremes they would go to to hide her identity.

Rukhsana goes through hell. Her parents manipulate her at every turn to get her to go along with their plans. They don't even care that she might lose out on a full ride scholarship because maybe her husband wants her at home rather than at school. Anything is better than being a lesbian. The Love & Lies of Rukhasana Ali goes deep into their prejudice and fear. Deep. At one point they even assume she must be possessed. That was horrific.

Where The Love & Lies or Rukhasana Ali lost me a bit was at the end. It's very after school special. Rukhsana's parents put her through way too much for this much of a happy ending. I mean, I'm glad she gets a happy ending, but it came about too quickly. There needed to be much more time and space and healing going on. It goes from Rukhsana having to literally flee the country to avoid becoming a child bride at her parents' hands to them all happily attending LGBTQ+ support groups together. I don't have a problem with her still wanting a relationship with her parents, but it didn't need to be immediate.

The Love & Lies or Rukhasana Ali is a hard read. There is just so many horrendous things happening. It's not all bad, as Rukhsana does have some support as she tries to make her way back home, but overall, the majority of this book is horrifying. Which is why that ending sticks out so much. But when someone tells you that they don't feel safe coming out, believe them! Even without such stark cultural differences, just believe them!

[Jo]

I won this proof in a giveaway on Twitter hosted by the author.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features colourism, homophobia, homophobic violence, discussion of forced marriage, imprisonment, drugging, a hunger strike, excorcism, a child bride, paedophilia, incest, rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, and murder of a gay person.

I had wanted to read The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan ever since I first heard about it, and I so very much wanted to like it! But unfortunately, this one fell pretty flat with me.

The book is full of Rukhsana's culture - the close-nit family, the food, the clothes, the traditions - and I felt I really got a feel for life for the well off in Bangladesh, which was awesome. And the concept for the story was incredible, and I feel with some editing, this would make quite a powerful, important story. But the fact is it would need a lot of editing. Essentially re-written from the ground up. This was, in my opinion, very badly put together.

The main issue for me was the writing; I hate to say it, but I feel it's quite badly written. It's disjointed and clunky, and didn't feel natural to me. There's a lot of telling over showing when it came to how Rukhsana was feeling and how she was thinking, and so many awkwardly written conversations. At the beginning, the scenes didn't flow, and felt to me more like they were added after the book had been written, as if Khan had been told it needed more to give us an idea of Rukhsana's life. But they were more snapshots than anything; here is Rukhsana with her friends at a restaurant. Here's Rukhsana hanging out with her girlfriend Arianna. In this regard, it definitely got better when Rukhsana was in Bangladesh, but there were also a lot of events that I feel should have been cut. They weren't really being needed, not adding anything to the story. It was such a hard slog to get through, but I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but unfortunately it didn't. This is such a horrific novel in regards to what Rukhsana experiences, it's absolutely terrifying, but I didn't care as much as I should have; I just really wanted it to finish.

I had real issues with Rukhsana's friends, Jen and Rachel, as well as Arianna. They completely refuse to understand Rukhsana's culture and how that affects the potential devastating affects of her coming out to her parents. They pressure her so much, and constantly accuse her of hurting Arianna by her silence. They tell her she's being over dramatic, it surely won't be that bad. So she'll be shouted at and maybe grounded, but they'll get over it. They just simply won't listen. And while I understand it can be difficult and upsetting when the one you love freezes every time you touch her in public, Arianna really just doesn't try to get it at all. It's always about Arianna and how she feels, how she's hurting, even when Rukhsana is in Bangladesh. I know white queer people have a lot of privilege, and so won't really get the experiences of queer people of colour, but Arianna is in a relationship with Rukhsana, and she doesn't even try? I could maybe understand if she tried, and it was selfishly too much for her, but to not even try, and to constantly blame Rukhsana... it almost felt to me like Arianna forgot homophobia was a thing, and there absolutely should be no reason why Rukhsana's parents would have an issue. It really doesn't take much to set her off. I think their relationship was really unhealthy and quite toxic.

And the ending felt so rushed to me. How the story was resolved was just unbelievable. I literally didn't believe it. I didn't believe what happened, and I didn't believe what Rukhsana felt about it. Especially after everything she went through, how she was treated, how her parents spoke to her and what they did to her. The ending just didn't make any sense to me. There's a conversation between Rukhsana and her friends where she says how they don't understand her culture, and what [redacted] means, and why some things are the way they are, so perhaps the same for me, too. Maybe I am too privileged to understand that ending. But an ending where the police and social services aren't involved just doesn't make sense to me. Numerous crimes were committed, and Rukhsana is an American citizen. Some people have a duty of care, and the fact that they did nothing was ridiculous. I also feel there would probably be some consequences to Rukhsana's mental health regarding everything she had been through, but that's not mentioned at all.

Unfortunately, The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali just really wasn't for me. But other people have really enjoyed it, so do read some other reviews before deciding whether or not to read it yourself.