So despite my three-star, there were a lot of fantastic aspects of this that I’m sure many will really enjoy!! The representation of Bengali culture is #ownvoices and feels very full-of-heart. The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali follows Rukhsana, a gay girl who is sent to Bangladesh and put into an arranged marriage after being caught in kissing her girlfriend. I really wish this book had been given more editing rounds. Rukhsana realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life? Only through reading her grandmother’s old diary is Rukhsana able to gain some much needed perspective. They immediately whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Her parents are devastated being gay may as well be a death sentence in the Bengali community. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech, where she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.īut when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana’s plans fall apart. She rolls her eyes instead of screaming when they blatantly favor her brother and she dresses conservatively at home, saving her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don’t know about. Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents’ expectations, but lately she’s finding that harder and harder to do.

The love & lies of rukhsana ali