Review: Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

New York Times bestselling authors Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed have teamed up to create a fun, fresh novel about politics, religion and adolescence. Jamie and Maya are both having a lousy summer. For Jamie, his whole summer has been about helping his mother organise his annoying (but cute) little sister's Bat Mitzvah. Meanwhile, it's Ramadan, Maya's parents have announced a trial separation and not only is her best friend about to move away to college (while Maya still has a year left at high school,) but she seems to have more or less forgotten Maya's existence.

Oh, and add to that their parents are expecting them to go about canvassing door-to-door on behalf of a local political candidate. Together. When they barely know one another.

What follows is a summer where the pair learn a lot about themselves, about speaking up for the things that matter, and the niggling feeling that they may just be falling in love ...

This was a fun and fresh read that handles some difficult subject matter well. We live in a difficult political climate and the authors do not shy away from some of the dirty tricks that are often used during elections (or in this case, a by-election,) and the importance of speaking up for the things that matter, and to keep speaking up, even when the outcome isn't favourable. It also perfectly highlights how a pair of teenagers not yet old enough to vote can make a difference in their local area. However, where this novel really shines is through its accurate depiction of how Jamie and Maya fall in love, in spite of some opposition from their parents mostly due to their differences in religion. 

This is a great read, handled well and with a whole lot of warmth. 

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Australia for my reading copy. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more