Hi friends, happy Wednesday, I hope you’re all well! Today I’m posting my review of Samira Ahmed’s novel, Love Hate and Other Filters.

Love Hate and Other Filters by: Samira Ahmed: Maya has a passion for film and making movies, but her parents have other plans for her. They expect her to get a good job, like becoming a lawyer, and to marry someone they deem worthy, which goes against everything she wants. Struggling to be the good daughter she wants to be for them, but also trying to be the person she wants to be for herself, Maya has a lot of choices she needs to make. Just when she has it all figured out, everything comes crashing down when tragedy strikes and she must rebuild from the bottom once more. This novel had a good amount of soft fluffy plot to counterbalance the heavy topics that are dealt in this. It almost felt like two novels in one because the first half focused on the fluff, whereas the second half was very heavy on topics of terrorism. They did come together, it just felt like the second half came out of left field. The reader understands that the interludes at the start of each chapter were the lead up to the second half, but they didn’t really understand that until after it happened. The reader didn’t get the relevance those one page glimpses because they didn’t know who it was in reference to or to what. It only became clear after and even after we found out their purpose, the reader didn’t care for them. It was like the author was giving us a background and justifying why this character did the horrible things that they did and they didn’t need justifying. As for the rest of the plot, the reader enjoyed it; it was a culture that is different from this reader’s so it was great to read and learn from; although they have read other reviews that say this isn’t the best Muslim rep out there, they still like the representation this showed of an Indian-immigrated, American family because no two families or experiences are alike. As for the romance plots, as much as they were fluffy, the reader didn’t feel anything between the characters. The reader liked how passionate and strong Maya was, but her love interests were boring. The reader liked Kareem over Phil, because there felt like a connection there, even if it wasn’t always romantic, they had good banter and were there for each other. As much as the author tried to make Phil interesting with his secret EMT aspirations and not wanting to be a jock, he was just bland. Maya’s parents were intense, but the reader gets where they’re coming from as parents. But the reader really like Hina, Maya’s aunt, she beat to the sound of her own drum and as the author showed us, was an inspiration for Maya, and readers, showing us life has more than one path. In the end, this was well written with a great cast of characters and a good plot.