Nabila

There's no benefit in comparing ourselves to others. Anyone can argue "but comparing myself to others help in motivating myself to be better!" and maybe there's a part of me that still agree with that argument because I used to whole-heartedly believe in that as a child, but at the end of the day, I know how short-lived a motivation that stemmed from self-comparison is. At the end of the day, you'll beat yourself up because you'll never be at the place where you want to be because where you want to be is where that other person is in their life. 

I guess, people my age are more prone to this. And maybe this feeling will still be there by the time we reach 30 or even 40 years old. With this pandemic and staying home a lot, I'm always with my phone and despite my decreasing screen-time, I'm still able to keep myself up to date with some people's (that I adore) lives. I'm just scared that I'll never grow out of this feeling because it's such a toxic feeling for myself and toxic for my relationship with people/things that I love.

Every single time I discover something new to love, the I'm-so-in-love-with-this-thing-I'll-talk-to-everyone-about-it phase only lasts for 3 months maximum and then I'll distance myself from that thing because that's usually the time I would see how many people also love the same thing and I would feel that I don't love that thing enough, as much as them, to even be in the same big circle as them. And that sucks because I know that nothing in this life is ever a competition, life is not a race, I preach those things when my friends come to me with that same feeling but what if deep in my heart, I don't believe the same for myself?

I feel this very same feeling for blogging, heck even the simple act of reading and fangirling, studying and I hate it the most when I feel it in any of my relationships. I sometimes say to myself "but you're just 20, it's normal to feel this way and slowly grow out of it" to calm myself down, which never actually works lol because what if this is still how I feel about everything after 10 years? And is this feeling even real? Humans always change, evolve to be better people. That's just how humanity should work, so should I always try to be better in everything? But none of this is a race, though? Is trying to be better = trying to win a race? 

Maybe, the key to cope with this feeling is just understanding that not everything is a competition, you don't have to be better at everything and for some things, it's okay to just simply love doing them and there is no such thing as 'better' when it comes to those things. I'm still learning a lot about things in life and myself and I'm not quite where I want to be in my coping with this feeling yet, but I hope I grow more and more each day to stop comparing myself so much to other people.

BLURB: Janna Yusuf is so excited for the weekend: her brother Muhammad’s getting married, and she’s reuniting with her mom, whom she’s missed the whole summer.

And Nuah’s arriving for the weekend too. Sweet, constant Nuah. The last time she saw him, Janna wasn’t ready to reciprocate his feelings for her. But things are different now. She’s finished high school, ready for college…and ready for Nuah.

It’s time for Janna’s (carefully planned) summer of love to begin—starting right at the wedding.

But it wouldn’t be a wedding if everything went according to plan. Muhammad’s party choices aren’t in line with his fiancée’s taste at all, Janna’s dad is acting strange, and her mom is spending more time with an old friend (and maybe love interest?) than Janna. And Nuah’s treating her differently.

Just when things couldn’t get more complicated, two newcomers—the dreamy Haytham and brooding Layth—have Janna more confused than ever about what her misfit heart really wants.

Janna’s summer of love is turning out to be super crowded and painfully unpredictable (Goodreads).

Throughout our lives, pain visits us in turns. There isn't a human alive that hasn't been touched by pain. We all carry scars and wounds, but only some rise to the surface to be seen and commented on. Simply put, the story of pain is common to us all.

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Romance
Goodreads rating: 4.00
Pages: 301
Publication: 2021 by Simon & Schuster

Source: MPH Online
Book links: Book Depository | Amazon | Google Books
Reading format: Paperback

Review type: Non-spoilery

Yes, romance is one of the subgenres of this book. Yes, it revolves around love. But it's so much more than that (which is always the case with S.K. Ali's books). I thought it was only going to be another cute halal romance as I saw in her second book, Love From A to Z. I would not say that this is a romantic book per se, but relationships and love were discussed, and in a much deeper way than I expected. We follow Janna as she tried to start 'something' with Nuah, which has been one of her closest friends and also gets to know dreamy Haytham and brooding Layth. Sounds like a love triangle drama, but I promise you, it wasn't. But there were a lot of other dramas, mainly familial, which was everything I wanted (seem diabolical but I WASN'T, OKAY).

Besides the drama in Janna's love life, she was also dealing with her mother finding love after divorce and her father's prejudice towards Nuah. This book also discusses racism, eurocentrism, prejudice across cultures in the Muslim community, which I don't personally see a lot.

I was a Nuah-Janna shipper since book 1, so it was so disheartening when I saw that ship slowly dissolve in this book. But it was also fun getting to know Layth and Haytham; at one point, I wasn't sure who I shipped Janna with😂 The Janna's love life plotline was very well-crafted, in my opinion. Some people argued that young teens that read this might get more confused about love while reading this, but I think that's the whole point. LOVE IS CONFUSING, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE A TEENAGER. You won't know what you want from the get-go. You might think you like someone, and then question your feelings for them after getting to know someone else. You might like someone and thought they also share the same feeling for you but you did not end up together. Love, lust, admiration are interchangeable especially in the teenage phase of one's life, and in Janna's case, she reached the perfect conclusion, which is summed up in the quote below:

As mentioned above, the discussion of prejudice across cultures in the Muslim community was constantly shown in the book. The most apparent one was, of course, the prejudice of one of Janna's family members towards her love interest, Nuah, which was a Black Muslim. The root of the prejudice across cultures, how common it actually is, the way people avoid the discussion of racism when it is done by the closest ones were discussed and described very nicely from conversations between Janna and Nuah, another separate discussion with her mom, and discussions with the other characters. It makes me think whether I can see a similar pattern happening in my own culture (yes it does, and I have to learn more about this to stop being blind).

To sum it up, I love this book so much, as much as I loved the first one although this one was much more fun for me due to the wedding setting. I cried a few times, laughed a lot, felt very seen, loved the ending and everything. I would give every star in the world to this book if I could.