Guest Book Review: If You Could Be Mine

If You Could Be Mine coverIf You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan, Algonquin, 2013. 9781616202514, 247 pp.

In Sara Farizan’s raw and emotional debut novel, Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six years old. In fact, they love each other, which is great and wonderful, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

They’re both girls, and in Iran, homosexuality is seen as an abomination. It’s a crime that people are publicly executed for. Nasrin and Sahar know their government will never allow their same-sex relationship. But sexual reassignment surgery is funded by the government there because it is viewed as a means of correcting a “mistake” of nature.

Sahar cannot deny her feelings for Nasrin, and she has to act quickly to get surgery and become male because Nasrin’s parents have arranged their daughter’s marriage to an older doctor. At the urging of a gay cousin, and advice from Parveen, a successful woman who had reassignment surgery herself, Sahar feels she has no choice but have the surgery so that she can become a man and, maybe, be with the woman she loves.

Thanks to Murphy’s Mom for the guest book review!

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