Review: Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

Title: Love, Hate & Other Filters
Author: Samira Ahmed
Publication Date: January 16, 2018
Format: Ebook - 288 pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Page

Summary: 

American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy who’s “suitable” to her mother. And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe, just maybe, pursuing a boy she’s known from afar her entire life who’s suddenly falling into her orbit at school.

But unbeknownst to Maya, there is a danger looming beyond her control. When a terrorist attack occurs in another Midwestern city, the prime suspect happens to share her last name. In an instant, Maya’s community, consumed by fear and hatred, becomes unrecognizable, and her life changes forever.

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Going into this, my expectations were fairly low as I knew very little about this book. I knew it was a YA contemporary following a Muslim, Indian-American teen girl with an interest in cinematography. After literally just one chapter though, I could already tell I was going to love it. Aaaand I was right. I was already relating to the character and smiling and laughing while reading just the first chapter. It's rare that I find a contemporary that manages to be a fluffy romance story while also tackling some very heavy topics. This book was so great and, I feel, accomplished a number of things. 

In Love, Hate & Other Filters, Maya is a seventeen-year-old in her last year of high school. This book is largely about Maya's romantic life. At the start of the novel, Maya meets Kareem, who is her parent's idea of the perfect guy. Problem is, Maya also has a long-standing crush on a guy at her school, Phil. Maya feels that nothing could ever happen between her and Phil - one, because he's not Indian and her parents would never approve, their approval being something she highly prizes. And two, because he is already in a relationship. 

While Maya wades through her love life she has to deal with an aspiration her parents only consider to be a hobby, racism, Islamaphobia directed at her from classmates, and making a decision that could completely change the kind of future she could have. And she does all this while remaining funny and relatable. I loved that she had an interest that doesn't show up often in YA and that it was a genuine interest of hers, not just something the author threw in to make her character more interesting. 

This book covers so much and does it all so well. I'll start with the characters, here are a few of my favorites. 

Hina is Maya's aunt and possibly my favorite character from the entire story. She is a single, middle-aged woman with a career living in Chicago. She defies Indian tradition and is proud to be her own woman. I especially love how her character contrasts with her sister, who is Maya's mother. Maya's mother is a woman who married young and who works at a dental practice her and her husband started after moving to the U.S. She is happy with the life she lives and the traditions she follows. I really appreciated this representation of Indian women from two different ends of the spectrum. 

Violet is Maya's best friend. She is outgoing and flirtatious and fun. The way Maya talks about Violet gives the impression that she is flirty and maybe a little promiscuous, but what I loved about this is that Maya never speaks on Violet in a way that shames her. Though Maya herself is relatively conservative, slut-shaming simply doesn't exist between her and Violet, and likewise Violet never comments negatively on Maya's lack of experience, choosing instead to encourage her to go after what or who she wants. 

Maya's crush, Phil, is a character I enjoyed but was the only one I wanted to see more from. We get to see a bit into who Phil is as he and Maya are getting closer, but he felt disjointed from the rest of the characters in the sense that he didn't seem to be as fully realized as they were. I did feel that the chemistry between him and Maya flowed very naturally and was well written. However, I had a problem with the start of their relationship. In other reviews I've read, people seem to have an issue with Maya for spending so much time with someone she has a crush on despite the fact that he's already in a relationship. While I don't condone flirting with someone who isn't single or in an open relationship, I find it strange that people are quicker to condemn Maya for their behavior than they are to place the blame on Phil himself given the fact that he is the one straying from his relationship. Also, the back and forth between him and Maya bothered me so much. I just really prefer when people are straightforward about their intentions, which initially, Phil was not. 

My other favorite character, Kareem, is the perfect Indian boy Maya's parents want her to be with. He's Muslim, respectful, good-looking, charming, and already in college working towards a career. When Maya realizes her and Kareem won't work out, he doesn't get defensive or become aggressive because of the rejection, he accepts it calmly and with understanding which I loved to see. Both in real life and in fiction, we too often see men react angrily when they feel they've been rejected by a woman, so seeing a depiction in which the interaction is handled by the characters like adults was refreshing. 

Now, my least favorite character is, of course, Brian. He is Islamaphobic and bullies Maya on several occasions throughout the story. I enjoyed that his character had more of a backstory than just being evil. There was some kind of explanation given as to why he was so prejudiced, and this explanation isn't given to excuse his behavior, but rather to help the reader understand it. When we think of bad people as pure evil, it dehumanizes them. It makes it harder to recognize changes in someone's behavior because we have this idea that if someone is bad, they're only ever bad and cannot be known to have ever done anything good. Instead, in this, we see a character who wasn't always so full of hate but grew to be that person over time, which I thought was a great way to represent these kinds of people and show a realistic version of them. 

Now there are a few topics in this I want to discuss. Knowing so little about this going into it, I thought it would just be a light, fluffy YA romance. Instead, this masterfully blended the lightheartedness of Maya's romantic and daily teen life, and heavier subject matter that needs to have a discussion going, especially in today's world where these topics are so prevalent. 

Here are some of those topics, the bad and the good.

One: The positivity in this. This positivity doesn't come into the story for just one aspect, it exists all throughout the novel. From Maya's acknowledgment that she has no reason to hate Phil's girlfriend for the simple fact that she's dating Phil (girl hate in YA is a trope I abhor) to Maya's father's words on the Islamaphobia and the hate crimes their family experiences after a terrorist attack in their state.

Two: Familial Expectations. Maya's parents expect her to go to a school they choose and marry an acceptable Indian man shortly after. They do not want her to move too far away from them or to a city where she might be tempted by things they disapprove of. They want her to live the traditional life they live and they genuinely seem to not understand why she would want anything else. Her parents frequently voice their concern at what their family and friends might think if they knew that Maya was living a life that was too American. As expected, this becomes a huge internal struggle for Maya.

One of my favorite quotes from this book comes from Maya's father and leads us to the next topic.

"These terrorists are the antithesis of Islam. They're not Muslim. Violence has no place in religion, and the terrorists are responsible for their own crimes, not the religion and not us."

I feel that this quote perfectly represents a concept that too many Americans either don't seem to understand or are too stubborn to. 

Three: 🚫SPOILERS!🚫 The biggest topics this book tackles are Islamaphobia and racism. At some point in the story, a terrorist attack is made in Maya's home state. The initial suspect is a Muslim man who shares the same last name as Maya's family, though they're not related, and do not know each other. Of course, this has terrible consequences for Maya and her family who, soon after, experience several hate crimes. Throughout this investigation, newspapers and people around Maya discuss the suspect as though he must be guilty. It isn't explicitly said by everyone that they assume he's guilty because he's Muslim, but it's very apparent this is the case. It then comes out that the man they initially suspected was actually one of the victims. The real terrorist was a young white male with ties to white supremacy. The book shows the sudden change in the media's and public's perception of the attack and the terrorist. Suddenly the terrorist is viewed as a quiet, disturbed kid with a bad childhood. I thought this depiction of our society was so well executed and very accurately represented how we perceive terrorism and race today. 🚫END SPOILERS!🚫

"I'm scared of the next Muslim ban. I'm scared of my dad getting pulled into Secondary Security Screening at the airport for "random" questioning. I'm scared some of the hijabi girls I know will get their scarves pulled off while they're walking down a sidewalk—or worse. I'm scared of being the object of fear and loathing and suspicion again. Always."

Another of my favorite quotes from this book. This is a reality for millions of people. Constant fear of prejudice from fellow Americans because of religion, race, or any number of other identifiers is a struggle too many people have to live with every day. It's no secret that here in the U.S marginalized people are typically lumped together and accused of crimes committed by someone sharing that same marginalization. Directing hate at innocent people because you cannot or will not distinguish a person from their race, religion, orientation, etc, only helps to worsen these fears and I think this aspect of American society was wonderfully explored in this book. 

And now for the ending. As serious as this book was at times, it ends on a pretty cheesy not and I loved every bit of it. I found it bittersweet, but very realistic that there's this idea that not everyone you are friends with or date in high school will stay with you for life. The idea of Maya going off on her own and making a life for herself, despite issues with her love interest and parents, felt very true to life. I was also pleased with the fact that her parents don't just suddenly come around to the idea of her going away to school, they stick to their side of the argument like most parents would, and this forces Maya to make the very real decision of determining what matters to her more - her parents wants or hers. 

"I'm not filming, but I'm etching this into my mind forever." 

I really loved that although Maya seems to use her camera to hide behind throughout the novel, wanting to document parts of her life rather than simply experiencing them, by the end, she acknowledges this and chooses to view her life without the aid of her camera lens. 

I also wanted to mention to anyone who is thinking about picking this book up, make sure you read the authors note. I don't typically read them, but I'm glad I did for this. It's beautiful and inspiring. It starts with the line "I wrote this book out of hope" and only gets better from there.

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✿ I know this was super long, so if you read through all of it, Congrats! If you enjoyed this review, please comment below with your thoughts or subscribe to BookSass. Thanks for reading!