Good Intentions: ‘Captivating and heartbreaking’ Stylist

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There is a weird paragraph about how two characters fight: because one says that Islam should evolve with the times and become modern? To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. In the end, we find out that his family never really had a problem with Nur dating Yasmina, as long as she's Muslim. Nur, a Pakistani Muslim falls in love with Yasmina, a Sudanese Muslim and the story flicks between the present and over the past couple of years from when they first met. That tends to confuse me and I did not enjoy in this and I don't enjoy it in any other book with time jumps.

The placement of the chapters in this way is absolutely intentional, and as you approach the end of the novel you realize it makes for a very clever parallel structure between the past and the present.

That he didn’t have to travel for two hours to get home to see them, that he could be around his family more often. This story covers male friendships, race and family dilemas, as Nur hasn't told his family he's dating someone.

She watches the screen as though she is trying to find something in the view of the London Eye and the cityscape, a message hidden there just for her. It is a crackling, wryly clever depiction of standing on the precipice of adulthood, piecing together who it is you’re meant to be.Oooooh love this representation of romance (or deep connection generally) between people of color, and I’m also heartened to hear about the author’s exploration of mental health and toxic masculinity! For fans of The Big Sick and Nick Hornby —a magnetic debut novel about a young man who has hidden a romance from his parents, unable to choose between familial obligation and the future he truly wants. It was heart wrenching reading about Yasmina, an intelligent black woman from a good middle class family allowing herself to be treated like a dirty secret by a racist boyfriend who uses his family’s as an excuse to hide his bigotry. Nur walks down the stairs, making sure to step on every creak and warp in the floorboards, learned from all his years living here, to make as much noise as possible.

He doesn’t let people in or talk about it, although he really seems to help one character with her mental health issues at one point. The book effectively makes the reader fall in love with how they come together, and Nur's constant poor decision making tears them apart along with the reader's heart . He wishes they had taken him up on it, said yes, so that he could lie when he got back after the break, say he had no time to talk, that he had taken his family to London to see the fireworks, that he’d always wanted to take them, that this was the first time they’d said yes and he couldn’t disrupt that by telling them his news.Deftly exploring family obligation and racial prejudice alongside the flush of first love, Good Intentions is a captivating and powerful modern love story that announces a thrilling new voice in British fiction. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. He keeps their relationship a secret from his parents for years because he worries about their acceptance; Nur is Pakastani and Yasmina is Sudanese.

Kasim Ali not only lays bare the sweetness and nerves of first love, but also levels an unflinching gaze on the prejudices and racism within minority communities. Upon reaching this point in the novel, I was nearly driven to skepticism and disbelief, wondering whether Ali would truly allow this relationship to prosper despite the clearly unhealthy and "subtly" disrespectful dynamic that was developing between the couple on Nur's behalf. Told through an alternating timeline over four years, we see Nur and Yasmina meet, fall in love and move in together.A heartbreaking debut about an interracial couple torn apart by the burdens of parental expectations and the heavy cultural pressures working against them. Although this book is jam-packed with romance and relationships and love, it also discusses much deeper subjects and ideas that are uncanny for a romance novel. A heart-wrenching and beautifully told debut novel about love, family obligation and finding your way.