This was one of the first literary novels I read and it was a journey.

To make clear from the start, I did enjoy this book. But I am a complete newbie to literary novels which will be the perspective this review will be written from. It took me a very long time to get into it. I was not used to the way the words flowed. They were written beautifully with a lot of words giving strong images, but it was new to me. When I got used to it eventually though I really started enjoying it. They gave a lot of beautiful feelings to the story and added a lot to what was happening.

The story itself was really interesting. It started intense immediately for the story to calm down a bit afterwards. The start of the main characters partner being attacked was a lot and made me feel for both men from the start. When it's then revealed the partner was attacked because he was with another man things changed with how I felt about him, but at the same time I kept hoping he would be okay.

There is a big part of the book where the main character meets a trans woman. I liked it how she was a character with her own background and personality. Her stress around bottom surgery was relatable to me as I am in my own process of working towards that as a trans man and it was interesting to see this included in the book.

The part where the main character starts transitioning to be with his love interest had me hold my breath a little bit as a trans person. I was worried about it being handled with sensitivity but it ended up being quite okay. I can imagine that if transitioning is the only way to legally be with your partner, it is something someone wants to try out. I was hoping to see any type of dysphoria mentioned, that being dysphoric over looking feminine, or dysphoria over still looking too masculine but that didn't happen in the story. Such things were not included and it made me feel a bit disconnected from this part of the story. But at the same time I thought it was decently okay.

The ending was quite open and vague for me. I do want to acknowledge this might be because of my autism and new venture into literary fiction, as it often happened I wouldn't exactly know what was going on. But it had some style about the ending I still quite liked.

Concluding this is an interesting story to read about a gay life in Tehran where the main character is trying to grasp what happened to their partner in an attack.


I received an eARC and this was my honest review.