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When We Were Sisters book review

When you're close enough to someone who is like your sister, brother, mother, everything, you always want that to stay, or do you? Keep reading to find out what I'm reviewing today.


Hey, I'm Kyla Denanyoh. Today, we're talking about Fatima Asghar's book When We Were Sisters. It is fiction with a theme of literature and short stories. 


This book is a novel, but it reads like multiple short stories. One of this book's most important quotes is: "What no one will ever understand is that the world belongs to orphans. Everything becomes our mother." That quote is important because you follow three sisters as you read this book. Noreen, Aisha, and Khazar. These three sisters are working very, very hard to make it. To deal with regular stuff like boys wanting lipstick and realizing that you have no food when you get back home. You have no water. What happens when you're in a medical emergency, and you have no transportation? 



It's a heartbreaking read but enjoyable because all the poems are interjected, and you get to hear the mom's perspective. When the book starts, the mom is deceased already, so I need to get a poem and get her perspective about why she and the dad named the kids and what they do. Getting the dad's perspective when he's out and when he actually gets harmed is great. Fatima Asghar put this together brilliantly. This was a really, really enjoyable read. 


There's this part of the book when Karzar describes herself as a scorpion. She is just burning up. She's enraged. She gets overcome with grief for not having her parents. She's overwhelmed with heartbreak for the fact that her sisters have to mother her. They become sisters, brothers, jailers, confidants, and protectors to each other. She describes herself as the scorpion that's ready to sting, jump out, and get anybody. Anyone can get the rage. Khazar is described like that at least twice in the book. 


Once when they just move in with Uncle Blank because we never know who this uncle is who adopts them, and then another time when she is out at the lake with her crush. And so she's overcome. She wants to be with this boy, but also she knows that Allah will be mad at her. And she just gets these waves of emotion, these waves of just being enraged. And it has to do with the grief of what she's feeling. And it triggers and compounds, and she just realizes my life is difficult. Can it stop? Why is this my life? I'm just mad at everything. 



I also remember a time when it happened again when she was out with the two sisters she wanted to go out and just be in the park, and she started to hear her dad's voice, and then the sisters eventually got into a fight, and you just get these waves of emotions these waves of grief and frustration at how difficult their life is but also how beautiful it is because the sisters have each other. 


This was an excellent book. I definitely was crying while I was reading it because there were some portrayals, and I was like, "I've never met you, Fatima Asghar, but I've had that exact same thought, "How did you know? "And so it was a very telling book. It was a great, great book. 



There is a really satisfying moment towards the end of the book when you find out that all three sisters have made it to adulthood. Their lives were really, really precarious. They were right on the edge of making it, of being able to survive. And they do survive. 


Would I reread the book When We Were Sisters? Yes, absolutely. Because this book was really haunting, I imagine the next time I read it, I'll still be cheering for Khazar and wondering what's going to happen with Noreen. And as I mature, as I get older, as my daughter gets older, I'll really start to think about a lot of the stories in the book and reimagine them for even my child. 


Until the next book review, Kyla

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Hi, thanks for stopping by!

I read more than 80 books a year, record a video book review and write about them here! Enjoy!

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