Book Review: The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

 Title: The Henna

Author: Adiba Jaigirdar

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, LGBT

Pages: 400

Publisher: Page Street Kids

Year Published: 2020

Format: Audiobook

"When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this from com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses.

When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants- as long as she isn't herself. Because Muslim girls aren't lesbians. Nishat doesn't want to hide who she is, but she also doesn't want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.

Flavia is a beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flavia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flavia is appropriating Nishat's culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled- but Nishat can't quite get rid of her crust on Flavia and realizes there might be more to her than she realized."

My Rating: 3.5/5

This was an interesting read to wrap up my end of the month reading. This story follows Nishat through coming out to her family, fighting for her culture and enduring bullying continually based on who she is. I think that this story does well highlighting cultural appropriation and the reasons its harmful to all who participate in it and the people's culture it lifts from. The characters in this book were interesting enough to read and I enjoyed hearing about Bangali culture, that being said I found that Nishat was a little self-centred at times. This might be due to the fact that I am a 26-year-old and I believe that Nishat is likely 16 or 17. A bit of development happens between those ages. I also found that there is a twist in the story that wasn't surprising at all. I'm not sure if we are supposed to realize what's going on, or if it's set up as a surprise, but either way that is one of the reasons this story didn't get 5/5 stars for me.

Overall a good story, and will be reading more work from the author. 

Thanks for reading,

Sidny