I did very much like the story and the characters. My only wish is that the POVs were more limited in the scenes. ( )

Thoughts on a book so good I'll need more time to wrap up my thoughts...

I really, really like this book. It is not just well-written and thoughtful, gripping and genuine, _I Can't Think Straight_ speaks to anyone who has ever felt pressured to be part of something because parents or society expect it, not because it is what you yourself truly want.

'But there was a reason why romance and passion were so suited to fiction; and to learn this lesson was a function of maturity...a growth away from the hotheadedness of youth." A mother thinks this as she busily and self-importantly works on the finishing touches of her daughter's engagement party. She dismisses love as a reason for marriage or she would if she even gave one second of thought to her daughter's impending marriage as a personal thing and not THE event of the season.

"Maybe we expect too much," a daughter says to her new friend, in the beginning stages of questioning why she is not more happy to be in a relationship with a man she feels she's supposed to love, but not one she does.

Shamim Sarif perfectly and painfully captures how smothering it can feel to do something out of family obligation and societal demands.

Understanding that life and love are not what they are in romantic comedies is one thing (some of us may even feel that movies ruined us for love) but looking at passionless marriage as "our lot in life" is something else entirely. No one should have go to through life like that.

Here’s a passage about “silent yearnings” and emotions one confronts when self-denial is no longer an option:

"What they (her crushes) all had in common was that the attraction was usually hidden, forever unspoken and always unrequited…Not that this potential meltdown was a reason to lie to herself, she knew, but up until now, it had happened that all the women she had liked IN THAT WAY were unavailable, uninterested or entirely unconscious of the situation and this had largely removed from Leyla’s shoulders the burden of deciding what to do in the event of an actual relationship... What she wanted, what she one day hoped for, was a simple mutual attraction."

I Can't Think Straight may be in large part about two nice, likable and realistic women eventually finding and falling in love with each other after years of not understanding why they each just couldn't fall in love with a "nice young man." But it's also about how being forced to follow the path that is deemed "moral" and "fitting" for a young woman can ultimately hurt every one in her life, especially the men they so desperately try to have romantic feelings for, but just end up hurting.

Shamim Sarif delivers an extremely touching, sincere, lovely, non-preachy, heartfelt story about love that is breathtaking and
unforgettable.

I need more time and better words to give it the justice it deserves. Already, I've bought Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen. Her lyrical prose will make you want to read everything she has written and hope that she is working on more! :) ( )

This isn't really a romance. It's sort of billed as a romance, and I think a lot of people read it as a romance (that's how I went into it), but, as I got into the novel, it started feeling much more like a novel about coming out and accepting yourself than just about the relationship between Tala and Layla. (That said, the movie that was made from this, most definitely a romance).

Layla and Tala are the two main characters in the story though. Tala is getting married to Hani and trying to start her import business. Leyla works for her father's insurance company and is writing (nearly finished) a novel. Tala is also Christian (and Arabic I think) and Layla is Muslim (and Indian I think). They both have challenging families that expect things of them, and at the time they meet they both have Significant Others. But, they meet, become friends, and then more, but, then get scared and separate for awhile.

This is where they grow as people and come to terms with themselves. And I thought that this was where the story hit its stride, and at times I wondered if the book would end quite differently than the movie.

I think that romance part of the book was okay, but, also it was a bit thin. We got told that they loved each other, but not shown it a whole lot. But then we got shown each of their coming out (mostly to themselves) stories. So, if you go in looking for a Brayden, Hill, Radclyffe, Bramhall sort of Romance this isn't exactly it. But, I liked it anyway, and now I definitely feel the need to watch the movie again. ( )

From its premise, I quite wanted to like this book -- Jordanian Palestinian Christian Tala meets a British Indian Muslim Leyla, they fall in love, no one ends up evil or dead. But I am saddened to find that it didn't find that it was worth more than a "meh, I've had better" rating.

What I liked:
-- It's a lesbian story about religious people of color (aka the premise). Wow!

The not-so-good:
-- Characterization was quite shallow. I didn't get a separate sense of complete personhood from anyone in the novel. This was fine for some of the supporting parts like the sister Yasmin -- but I found myself confusing the main characters with each other. I still can't quite remember which one was the writer and which had some other kind of position (what position? I don't know). In keeping with this, the main interpersonal conflicts in the story felt very single-sided; the mothers want their daughters to get married, Hani isn't a bad guy but the relationship is doomed, the housekeeper very much dislikes the mother character. Okay, got it -- what else?

-- The plot was quite shallow. The ladies meet through the boyfriend of one of them; the other is engaged. They hit it off. They have a brief affair. They can't stop thinking about each other, but neither one is out. They separate from each other, and based on the affair, they come out. It breaks the hearts of their male partners, though the partners find comfort in the fact that their partners aren't looking for better men -- only women, who are less threatening (um, ick). They find each other again and the book ends in happiness. Blech.

-- Morally I struggle with that plot line (a lot), and I feel very judgmental of the characters. An affair is the catalyst for coming out? No one really deals with its fallout? They can't stand up to social pressure for marriage until they find Someone To Fall In Love With? The parents just kinda...push back a bit and then life is good? No moral depth beyond a handful of reflections that "oh, I suppose I wasn't fair to my good friend Ali who still doesn't know I slept with his girlfriend"? Leyla gets a girlfriend and has sex with her while secretly imagining the girlfriend is someone else? Ick ick ick.

-- The jokes are tired. The final line -- a note on how a circle of tittering girls shouldn't judge Tala because "some of my best friends are Lebanese" -- is eye-roll-inducingly overused. I also find the ongoing humorous foil of the maid spitting in the irksome mistress's tea is singularly unhumorous, and as some sort of metaphor for the mother needing to swallow the unexpected byproducts of the lives she wants to control, it falls short.

-- The writing switches between points of view and settings seemingly randomly (and is much too florid for my taste). The poor writing here aligns with the minimal characterization and trite plot -- it feels like a first attempt at a novel, which an editor should have worked to improve.

-- As a final message, I also very much dislike that the book centers everything on an infatuation and suggests that it is the wellspring of eternal happiness, rather than addressing the more permanent underlying questions of whether coming out in general is worth blowing up a life (likely true), and the high probability that the short relationship between two people with admittedly little in common is doomed. I'm sure that says more about me as a realist who prefers less fantasy in my escapism than the novel, though.

I know this story speaks to a lot of people because it's a common story in a lot of histories. It didn't work well for me precisely because it had very little new to say, and what it did say hit some of my romance and coming out story pet peeves. But it did engage me, and I finished it without any struggle at all. If you're looking for lesbian PG-13 romance, this book has it, and you should definitely check it out. Maybe don't normalize this story for impressionable teenagers though. ( )

I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif

I found this to be a beautifully written book about illicit love. It is a love story taking place in Apartheid Africa within the Indian & white community. There are of course the horrors that we read of during the time of Apartheid but the main storyline is of two women. Tala, a Palestinian woman from London and Leyla, a British Indian woman, who fall in love and try to find a way to be together. It is told, as I said, beautifully and with good taste.

"I Can't Think Straight explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, conventions and individuality, creating a humorous and tender story of unexpected love and unusual freedoms."

I thought this book exquisite and would love to read more like it. ( )