A read Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian and here's what I thought...

 

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian was another book that was sat on my shelf for a good while before I finally got around to reading it, and it finally made it off and into my brain – you truly love to see it. Now, a quick point I want to make about this post is that I’ve unintentionally spent most of this post just talking about the characters – I think that might be because this is more of a coming-of-age book than anything else.

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So, good bestie, the blurb – Blurbstie, if you will? – told me that the book was set in 1989 – Taylor Swift tease – in New York and followed three characters. The first, Reza, who has recently moved to NYC with his mum and was terrified of people finding out he was gay. The second, Judy, who worships her uncle Stephen, who has AIDS. And third, Art, the only out and proud kid at the school. Now, Reza and Judy start dating, but Reza and Art start getting closer, and Reza wants to find a way out of his relationship with Judy without hurting her. That’s what good Blurbstie says. So, there’s a lot of potential for mess and drama set up there already.

The book is told through multiple perspectives, the three characters, obviously. And I don’t think I’m ever just like, “Wow, multiple perspectives, I’m immediately sold”. I think it’s just thanks to the fact that I’ve read a single book that did multiple perspectives so poorly that I’m always just a little suspicious of them.

Anyway, the three are connected in a way in the first chapter when Reza opens a yearbook the school that he’s starting has sent him. He notices Judy, because he comments that she looks nothing like the rest of the students, and then his stepbrother mentions that the school should only have one queer (although he uses a slur), and Reza immediately goes to look for Art. But since Reza read something that basically told him that all gays will die young because of AIDS, he’s immediately scared, and bless him, he just wants to live.

Chapter three is Judy’s first chapter. I think out of the three, hers was my favourite, just because she’s so weird. She literally gets one look at Reza and she’s like, “Okay, what am I wearing to our wedding?” And sis… slow down. She’s so awkward trying to flirt with him. But since he’s not from the US, he doesn’t understand the references and jokes she’s making. The whole interaction is so awkward… I loved it so much. Then we get this interaction between Reza and Art, and bless, Reza, he’s so scared of just being himself. I really felt bad for him. And since Art was so open about who he is, that scared Reza too. And, also, since he is so scared, every time he speaks, he essentially speaks like someone writing an essay, and almost like he has no personality. You know how you can sort of gather bits of someone’s personality from the way they speak, Reza gave nothing.

Then, a little into the story, Art goes to a protest, and in the aftermath, he sees Reza there, on the outskirts, and basically follows him to a record store, and Art is like, “Hmm… gay?” but then has this little turmoil, because he’s pretty sure he’s crushing on Reza, while he thinks Reza is going after Judy. So, Art is dealing with these feelings of guilt of having a crush on the person that Judy likes. But also, because Reza is so terrified of how openly gay Art is, Reza, I guess, turns down his gay.

I found the most relatability in Reza. Not in his journey, but because he was quiet, reserved, wants to be himself, but there’s this block holding him back – which was something I felt, myself growing up, big surprise. Although, I wish I, as a person, could have been, or be, someone more like Art – that loud, unapologetic kind of person. And then I also saw a little bit of myself in Judy, because she has this, “Oh, this kind of person will never like me because I’m bigger,” mentality which, bloop, do I have? Perhaps. So, I definitely saw bits of myself of how I have been, or want to be, in all three of the protagonists.

Both Art and Judy are really intense. Art, I understand why he is – it’s the time where there are people that are wildly and openly homophobic, as well as people who are scared to even touch people with AIDS, so I get why he acts the way he does. But Judy… I get that since she is Art’s best friend, she might have gotten like some residual intensity from him. However, when, and this is probably a spoiler, Reza eventually tells Judy that he thinks he likes men. And the way she reacts… Now I understand that she and Reza were together, and that she felt betrayed when he told her. I understand that. But girl, I think the way she reacted was way too intense for what he did… Like, and this is another minor spoiler, she literally tells him he deserves to rot in hell. And given the fact that Reza is, one, accepting the fact he is gay during the height of the AIDS fear and the fact that he is Iranian… She told him he deserved to rot in hell…

I liked Judy in the beginning, but I’d say in the second half of the book, she ended up becoming kind of unlikeable. She gets mad at both Reza and Art and doesn’t even give them the chance to explain their side of things until her Uncle Stephen, the one that she worships, tells her to. I will say, she pulls it back towards the end of the book, but she still did what she did… Although what I do have to say, if I’m having this much of a reaction to Judy as a character, that has to mean that Nazemian did a phenomenal job writing her.

And to mention Stephen for a moment – I loved Stephen. So, for context, Stephen is in the later stages on how AIDS develops in a person, but throughout the whole book, he was so unabashedly himself. So open, so gay. Stephen was an icon, a legend and the moment. And do you want to cry? Do you want to feel things? Get invested in Stephen. Just do it. Do yourself the favour and experience this character.

To close this out, yes, I did spend the majority of this post talking about the characters, and I feel like that was down to this book being more character driven than it was plot driven. Like, this book is as powerful as it is because of its characters. This book was so good, but it was intense – definitely not the easiest of reads from this year for me – but it was definitely worth it. Read this book!

Okay, bye!