Time 2 Read: Lucy Ferriss

Showing posts with label Lucy Ferriss. Show all posts

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Review: A Sister To Honor

A Sister To Honor

by Lucy Ferriss

Why did you choose this book? I’ve been reading a lot of ‘Muslim women’ stories

When did you read this book? January 2015

Who should read this book? readers who enjoy reading stories of other cultures

Source: Library

Here is a synopsis of A Sister To Honor from Goodreads

Afia Satar is studious, modest, and devout. The young daughter of a landholding family in northern Pakistan, Afia has enrolled in an American college with the dream of returning to her country as a doctor. But when a photo surfaces online of Afia holding hands with an American boy, she is suddenly no longer safe—even from the family that cherishes her.

Rising sports star Shahid Satar has been entrusted by his family to watch over Afia in this strange New England landscape. He has sworn to protect his beloved sister from the dangerous customs of America, from its loose morals and easy virtue. Shahid was the one who convinced their parents to allow her to come to the United States. He never imagined he’d be ordered to cleanse the stain of her shame...

My Review

I saw this one listed a couple of months ago and couldn’t wait for it’s release date! I have been reading a few books about Muslim women lately, so I put this one on reserve as soon as I could. It is always so much fun to be the FIRST to read a new library book!

This one was well worth the wait. I actually lost sleep over this one because I couldn’t put it down. The book was an emotional roller coaster, centered around Afia Satar, a pre-med student from Pakistan attending a small woman’s university in New England. Her brother Shahid is the star athlete for his squash team at a nearby university. A major theme in the book is honor, and how our understanding of honor shapes who we are. Many of the characters in this book act out of ‘honor’ but we learn that different people, and different cultures, have different interpretations of the word ‘honor’.. We also see how hard it is to understand a culture different than our own, as both Afia and her American friends struggle to understand and accept these different interpretations.

I really felt like I got to know these characters and I worried about their fate. Afia was so sweet and innocent, torn between her love for Gus, an American student and teammate of Shahid, and her duty to her family to return home untainted by American values. Shahid was smart with such a bright future, and he loved his sister very much. He was torn between his desire to protect her and his obligation to redeem the family honor. This led to some tense moments when I feared for each of them! And just when I thought the story was coming to an end...it didn’t! There was a lot more story to tell!

This was definitely a WOW! read for me and I’ll be talking about this one for awhile. I won’t be at all surprised this December when it shows up on my ‘best reads of 2015’ list! This will be a great book club selection with discussion ranging from the definition of honor to family obligation and beyond!

My Rating: ★★★★★ 5 Stars post signature

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Tuesday Memes: A Sister To Honor

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting A Sister To Honor by Lucy Ferriss.

Opening

In the valley below Farishta’s house, the mulberry trees clung fast to their leaves. When the sun rose over the eastern hills they looked plated in gold; but as the wind lifted the dry leaves, they whispered like yellow-haired girls sharing secrets. Seated in a circle in the warm sun, the village women pulled stripped branches from the stacks piled up during the monsoon pruning. From these they made baskets they would use in the spring, when the trees had returned to flower and to fruit and the dead leaves had scattered in the tall grass.

Farishta was looking out from the hutja, the main room of the house. Her stepson Khalid lay sleeping on a charpoy, his injured arm dangling. His breath seemed to catch in his adnoides with a sound that gave her a prick of irritation, at which she felt ashamed. Soon her girls would be home from school; her husband, Tofan, would take time from overseeing the harvest to fetch them and check quickly on Khalid, and then he would be off again. At that point Khalid might wake. He would take from her a lunch of chicken wings and rice. He would ask where his father was.

My Teaser

Khalid poured himself a cup of tea and brought a plate of raisins over to Shahid’s charpoy. He leaned close. “If I visit, as you call it, “ he said in a low voice, “it will be to rectify the situation there.”

page 74