Review: A Place for Us

After I picked this book out to be on a book tour for, I started seeing it everywhere. Not only is it the first book published under Sarah Jessica Parker’s new venture, SJP for Hogarth, but it’s also been getting a lot of buzz for being one of the top most anticipated books of summer.

I’m often hesitant to pick up books that are so buzzed about, because there are SO many good books out there that don’t get the hype they deserve, and you never know if a much-buzzed about book is going to be a big let-down.

After reading A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza, I’m happy to say that, in my opinion, this one is worthy of all the buzz! I gave it four stars – there were just a few things that kept me from giving it the full 5.

The Plot

At its core, A Place for Us is about a Muslim family living in America. Mom, Layla, and dad, Rafiq, immigrated from India and have three children in the United States, making them first-generation American.  The children, Hadia, Huda, and Amar, are brought up in a fairly strict Muslim faith.

The story opens at an Indian wedding: Hadia’s. We learn within the first chapter that Hadia is marrying a man she’s chosen for herself, and was unsure that would ever happen. We also learn that the family hasn’t seen Amar in three years, so something must have happened to estrange him. This sets up the entire novel, and when we get to Part Two, we’re back in the past.

The Review

What I loved about A Place for Us was the way Mirza seamlessly weaves together family, identity, religion, and love. Each character struggles with each of those things in his or her own way, and Mizra used their different points of view to narrate the story so very well. It pulled me in and endeared me to each character separately, which gave me a unique perspective of each one, even when the story was being told from another’s point of view.

While I really loved that portion of the way this book was written, I had a hard time with the time jumps. I can see how they added to the story, with seeing an incident and then going back into the past to explain how the characters are the way they are or into the future to see how it affected them, but you’ll just be reading sections of a chapter and suddenly be in a different time AND from a different perspective. It all just got a little discombobulating, orienting yourself back with another character in another time altogether.

Another thing that I really did like about this book is that it’s about being Muslim in America, yet family and relationships are the focus, not that. It’s definitely a piece of the novel, having clearly affected each character, but it’s not the focus. I felt like this book could have run away in that direction, but it really didn’t. While I’d like to read something like this about being a Muslim in America during the last two decades or so, I was glad that the story continued to focus on family from beginning to end.

Overall, A Place for Us was a fantastic read, and one that I definitely recommend picking up.