I think I'm a confirmed Adiba Jaigirdar fan after reading The Henna Wars

Today I’m talking about The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar. This is a book that I found out about because I read, and loved, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, and this is, as far as I’m aware, was the book that came out prior. Some may call me a fan, although, I don’t know that I could confidently say I would be a fan after one book, because what would I do if I didn’t like anything that came after? That’s not related to this book, but still…

The blurb says that Nishat’s parents say she can be anyone she wants – as long as she isn’t a lesbian. She doesn’t want to lose her family, but she also doesn’t want to hide who she is, which only gets harder once Flavia walks into her life. Beautiful and charismatic, Flavia takes Nishat’s breath away. But as their lives become tangled, they’re caught up in a rivalry that gets in the way of any feeling they might have for each other. Can Nishat find a way to be true to herself… and find love too?

To give the same content warning that comes in the front of the book: This book contains instances of racism, homophobia, bullying, and a character being outed.

Chapter one, and the very first line for that matter, has Nishat saying she’s coming out to her parents at Sunny Apu’s wedding party, and she mentions that Bengali weddings are nauseatingly heteronormative. But she tells them when they get home, and all they say is “we understand”. Ooh it was just so crusty to read. Like you know when you physically cringe, because it was sort of like, “Okay, but what are they thinking?” since they didn’t actually give any kind of reaction. But then you do see, at the end of the chapter, her parents talking and saying that they’ll act like nothing’s wrong while they think she’ll change her mind. In the second chapter, she ends up going to a wedding after doing henna work on her little sister Priti and crying a little. Then at the wedding, that’s where Nishat runs into Flavia, who she used to go to school with, and she says that she feels like she sort of has her own Bollywood moment with her.

In the second chapter, there was this explanation of what summer weddings in Bangladesh are like, about how they’re expensive and extravagant to the point as the book puts it “you don’t realise you’re in a country in 104-degree heat”. It was moments like this that I really liked, where Nishat’s culture came into play. Simple things like how when she was a party and she thinks about the kinds of food she’d rather be having, and what it is about them that makes them special.

You see a very obvious bit of the racism that Nishat experience in the form of some crusty musty behaviour from this girl, Chyna, who seemingly made up a lie for a reason as to why Nishat couldn’t stay at this sleepover she’d come to. Then again, even before that, there’s a moment where you find out that Chyna also made up a rumour that one of Nishat’s relative’s restaurants gave people diarrhoea and hurt the business. Homegirl was full crusty. There’s even this bit when Nishat is talking with Flavia and Flavia almost tries to humanise her, telling Nishat that Chyna has wanted to be a lawyer since she was little. And like, sure, give her some humanity in this childhood dream, but that still didn’t negate her crustiness.

When it comes to the rivalry bit, in Nishat’s business class, there’s this competition where the class has to make a business and then there’s a 1,000-euro prize for the winner. I think the winner was the one that was the most successful. But also 1,000 euros is wild for a class full of seventeen-year-olds. Like if my college had some kind of competition that gave the winner £1,000, and I won? I’d have either been so irresponsible with it, or my parents would have told me to save it. Still, Nishat’s idea is to do henna design, and the rivalry comes in when Flavia does the same after being inspired by Nishat’s little sister, Priti, after seeing her henna both on Instagram and the wedding that they all just happen to be at in the beginning.

I don’t know how I felt about Nishat in relation to Flavia for the first half of the book. Yes, Nishat had a crush on Flavia, but for the first half of the book, they didn’t actually interact all that much. There has been a BL series I watched, Star in my Mind, that I ended up not enjoying all that much, simply because for me, I saw no reason for the two leads to get together in the end – and the reveal of feelings (in my opinion) came far too late into the series. This does actually relate, don’t worry. I did worry that since this book did take about half of the book for anything of substance to actually happen, that it was going to end up like Star in my Mind, like the reveal would happen at a point where I already didn’t care whether they ended up together or not.

I think that the book and relationship between Nishat and Flavia ended at a good point. Again, to use Star in my Mind as a comparison, that ended with the two wildly in love with each other at the end, and to me, that didn’t really fit in with the rest of the story. I was so glad that this didn’t happen in this book. I’m not going to spoil the ending, even though this book came out in 2020, but it ended in a good place, I think. There was a moment where Nishat fully just tells Flavia that she’s not about to get into a relationship with her, or even consider one, partly since she’s Chyna’s cousin, and reading that, I was fully like, “Good for you!”

But the thing was, this book, to me, didn’t seem to be about the romance, about Nishat and Flavia getting together, like I did think it would be at first. It was more about Nishat just getting to be herself and live her life, and navigating the things that were in the way of her doing that. And even then, Nishat and Flavia don’t actually interact all that much. But weirdly, since Nishat only has a crush on Flavia, it’s actually a really good representation of what crushes are more often than not. I know in a lot of books, the person who has a crush on someone always interacts with them a lot, but having Nishat and Flavia not really interacting all that much throughout the book was actually nice to see.

Okay, bye!