Sara Farizan’s If You Could Be Mine
If You Could Be Mine
Young Adult
E-book
211
Even though it can be argued that we live in a more accepting society, it is hard to find diverse books. We find that most books are about white, cis, heterosexual, males. When we find females they are almost always white, heterosexual, and cis. This is our unfortunate reality. If You Could Be Mine breaks this reality and I absolutely loved this book.
If You Could Be Mine is a young adult novel set in current day Iran and centers around Sahar and Nasrin, best friends since birth and now lovers. We start this book learning about the love these two have for each other and how they have to keep it hidden extremely well due to homosexuality being illegal. Soon we learn how Nasrin will be dealing with the illegal aspect of her relationship and Sahar’s world comes crashing down around her. Nothing will be the same again for these two young lovers.
Let me say that I had a dislike for Nasrin until the very end. She redeemed herself in the last chapter and I could finally see that she really did love Sahar, she was just a spoiled girl that didn’t always know how to express her love and reassurance of that love. I won’t say exactly what happens in that last chapter, but you see her a real person with real feelings. You see her as a person who thinks she has lost the person she loves the most.
I usually want happily ever afters out of my books, but I knew going into this that I wasn’t going to get the traditional HEA. I mean, it’s about two lesbians in Iran of all places. How could they possibly get their true happily ever after? That being said, I was good with how the book ended. It was a good ending. Was it overly happy? No. But it gave me the closure I needed for Sahar, the main character. And it gave me hope. Hope for a lesbian university girl in Iran. What more could I ask for?
I want to take a second to say that the secondary characters in this book were great. I loved Ali and Parveen in particular and Reza even turns out to be a great character. We get a large amount of diversity in this book through both the main characters and the secondary characters.
This book is readily available on Amazon.com and your local bookstore.
Read on, my friends!