The Big Sick meets Nick Hornby in Kasim Ali's debut Good Intentions, a novel about a young man who has hidden a romance from his parents, unable to choose between familial obligation and the future he truly wants. Nur is a British Pakistani man who meets and falls in love with Yasmina, a young Black aspiring journalistst. The backward-looking part of the book has the plot of conventional romance; the forward-looking part, which explores the aftermath of Nur's announcement (built largely around his dithery way of arranging a first meeting between his parents and Yasmina's), is fresher and more compelling. If he’s being honest, there is something about watching together, about sitting there, year after year at home, that even he likes. Yes, indeed – it’s interesting for the male perspective (although we’ve had Open Water, obviously) and the cultural and mental health areas covered.

The story delves into a lot of the complex social and racial issues that the couple has to deal with, especially in terms of Nur and his family, and navigated these issues with great care. It's heartbreaking to watch Yasmina, a bright, dedicated, and loving girlfriend, suffer through a debilitating four years of growing self-doubt and worthlessness over the way that Nur treats her. It was heart wrenching reading about Yasmina, an intelligent black woman from a good middle class family allowing herself to be treated like a dirty secret by a racist boyfriend who uses his family’s as an excuse to hide his bigotry. On the surface their relationship is a happy one but there is a persistent uncomfortable undercurrent, Nur has been keeping Yasmina a secret from his family the whole time.The author wrote the book jumping between different years of Nur and Yasmina’s relationship, and though this added suspense or wonder of how each grew as people, it was disappointing to see how Nur’s character was so stagnant. Good Intentions is a heartbreaking story of a young man caught between worlds—between youth and adulthood, between family and passion, between ambition and survival. It felt rushed and to be honest, I'm not sure what other way it would have ended, but maybe we could have seen Nur's family reacting to the breakup.

The depth poured into each relevant character does not detract from the fact that this is Nur's story, their exposition only adding to Ali's commentary on the drawbacks in how Nur happens to navigate his life. There is a weird paragraph about how two characters fight: because one says that Islam should evolve with the times and become modern? I really enjoyed the writing (the banter between the main leads, the descriptions of the food omg) such that I ended up tabbing way more than expected! Yes, I know the feeling, I’ve read loads less than normal this last couple of weeks, back on track now, thankfully.

The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. In the end, their relationship falling apart was the natural conclusion to Nur's inability to address his own failings, because he had been too busy placing those failings on others rather than ever confronting them within himself. Rahat is the only person who can really read and calm him – so is this actually fair on Yasmina, either. It was exhausting witnessing a character who was questioning themselves and their relationship countlessly, with little to no explanation of what their issue was until the very end of the book.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). It addresses human imperfections and the prejudices that people don’t want to admit to themselves and how a persons decisions have far reaching consequences that affect other peoples lives. He takes Islam and it's teaching as backward and is thoroughly making it out like the people who believe in it's teaching are "backward" and that doesn't sit right with me. Nur loves how she gets so excited about something that could so easily become mundane to other people, the same year in, year out.

not bc of the content (bc again I thought the commentary was excellent), but rather how it was executed at times. It's very easy for us to partake in their ignorance and bigotry when we avoid ever confronting them about it due to preconceived notions about their capacity to learn, and I'm glad to see a South Asian author so explicitly criticizing it and refusing to absolve our generation of blame. Deftly exploring family obligation and racial prejudice alongside the flush of first love, Good Intentions is a captivating and powerful modern love story that announces a thrilling new voice in British fiction. Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise.

A] clever debut… Ali explores racism, the difficulty of navigating cultural heritage and the travails of early adulthood [with] a climactic sucker punch ’ Metro --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Overall, especially with the plot being so heavy and complex, this book was an amazing read and I would recommend it to anyone that loves contemporary fiction that makes you think about the different lives that others lead. It contained lots of pages of very little happening, just general chit chat whilst eating a meal for example and I found myself losing interest far too often. I’m probably gonna come back and add my thoughts on Yasmina and the whole “racism, dating a black girl” point but these are just my initial thoughts.An exploration of the ways that race and family ties may complicate or imperil romance even if everyone means well. it just made me feel a little bored, as i waited to read about the plot of what was currently happening. However human emotions are complex and what we think is true isn’t always, hence, where an informed McEwan style narrator could have got under the bonnet so to speak and actually held his character to account by offering more of the behind the scenes, subconscious thinking. Also, Yasmina and Nur’s relationship had little substance provided which made Nur’s love for her even more conflicting with how he treated her. the flaws of the people, especially nur, weren’t brushed aside - they had consequences, and that was a thing i enjoyed seeing.