#Sara farizan

[lgbtqreads]

Inside an Anthology: Night of the Living Queers ed. by Alex Brown and Shelly Page

Today on the site we’re doing a dive into Night of the Living Queers, an all-queer Horror anthology edited by Alex Brown and Shelly Page and releasing August 29th from Wednesday Books! Not only is this collection super queer, but the lineup is entirely comprised of authors of color, providing fresh perspectives for an anthology that is not to be missed! Here’s the official description: Night of…

[godzilla-reads]

🐊 My Buddy Killer Croc by Sara Farizan and Nicoletta Baldari

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Andy, like a lot of kids, feels a little lost and out of place when he moves to Gotham. Unlike most kids, he’s less excited about the idea of meeting Batman than he is about seeing his childhood hero, the wrestler Waylon Jones… aka Killer Croc!

I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about Waylon Jones before I read this, but now I want to know more! This graphic novel is geared towards a younger audience, but I liked how it emphasized choices and how no matter our hand of cards it’s what we do with it that matters. But also that that is easier said than done.

The story was exciting and I like that they humanized Killer Croc, but didn’t take away his villain-status. The ending scene was so nice when Waylon is allowed to see Andy finally get into wrestling. It pulled my heart strings!

[the-final-sentence]

"I'd better get home and finish my homework!'

Sara Farizan, from “A Brief Intermission”

[starcloudedsky]

"The love bite on my neck could one day be replaced by rope burn." -If you could be mine by Sara Farizan

(this is a wonderful book i recommend it)

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: Fresh Ink

Author: Lamar Giles, Nicola Yoon, Malinda Lo, Melissa de la Cruz, Sara Farizan, Eric Gansworth, Walter Dean Myers, Daniel José Older, Thien Pham, Jason Reynolds, Gene Luen Yang, Sharon G. Flake, Schuyler Bailar, Aminah Mae Safi

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2018

Genres: fiction, anthology, contemporary, LGBT+, fantasy, romance

Blurb: Careful, you are holding fresh ink - and not hot-off-the-press, still-drying-in-your-hands ink. Instead, you are holding twelve stories with endings that are still being written, whose next chapters are up to you, because these stories are meant to be read and shared.

[mfred]

Never trust a pinball machine!

Dead Flip by Sara Farizan

I started this on audio and then came to realize audio books are not for me, but liked the book so much I put it on hold at the library. This is a great story of friendship and the way we grow and change and yet also remain true to ourselves and each other. Plus some horror. There were some plot holes, but the characters were so fleshed out and fully realized, I didn't mind. Also, BIPOC and queer main characters, yasssss!

4 stars.

[kingsbridgelibraryteens]

Middle School Monday: My Buddy, Killer Croc by Sara Farizan & Nicoletta Baldari

Andy is a shy, quiet boy who is new in school and new in Gotham. The scar on his face makes him a target, and he doesn’t know how to fight back. Andy could use some friends, or at least some allies to help him deal with the bullies at school. If only he could locate his wrestling hero Waylon Jones, maybe Waylon could become both a friend and an ally? Maybe Waylon could teach Andy how to fight back?

When Andy learns that Waylon Jones is now known as Killer Croc, a villain who is one of Batman’s many enemies, he’ll have to make a very important decision … can he still trust the man that he admired since he was a little kid?

Give this graphic novel to older kids and younger teens who love stories about friendship, bullies, heroes & villains, and secret identities.

[meagankimberly]

If You Could Be Mine Review

Disclaimer: Some of the links in my review for If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan are affiliate links. If you click them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. The decision of whether or not to buy something is completely up to you. A version of this book review first appeared in The Lesbrary. Summary of If You Could Be Mine Childhood friends Sahar and Nasreen are desperately in love,…

[jonathanpongratz]

Book Review: Dead Flip

  Hey Readers! Hope you’re having a good start to the week. I’m back to work and it’s … well, not wonderful, but not horrible either. I just have a lot of catching up to do right now. Anywho, I read another book! This time I read Dead Flip by Sara Farizan. This is my second to last read for my grad school project, and the cover sold me right away. This has been on my TBR for quite some time, but…

[jolieeason]

Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror Delight by Shelly Page, Alex Brown, Ryan Douglass, Kalynn Bayron, Sara Farizan, Kosoko Jackson, Tara Sim, Rebecca Kim Wells, Trang Thanh Tran, Vanessa Montalban, Em X. Liu, Maya Gittelman, Ayida Shonibar

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books Date of publication: August 29th, 2023 Genre: Horror, Young Adult, Short Stories, Anthologies, LGBT, Queer, Fantasy, Paranormal, Fiction, Lesbian Purchase Links: Kindle | B&N | AbeBooks | WorldCat Goodreads Synopsis: Night of the Living Queers is a YA horror anthology that explores a night when anything is possible exclusively featuring queer…

[acourtofpaperandink]

St. Louis Teen Book Festival

St. Louis Teen Book Festival

Post By:BookGirl This past weekend the St. Louis County Library and local book store the Novel Neighbor teamed up to put on the, first ever, St. Louis Teen Book Festival. Having never put on an event like this before they were not sure what to expect but with over 400 people in attendance I would call the event a huge success. Fingers crossed it becomes a annual event. Actually it needs to…

[jessryno]

St. Louis Teen Book Festival

St. Louis Teen Book Festival

Post By:BookGirl This past weekend the St. Louis County Library and local book store the Novel Neighbor teamed up to put on the, first ever, St. Louis Teen Book Festival. Having never put on an event like this before they were not sure what to expect but with over 400 people in attendance I would call the event a huge success. Fingers crossed it becomes a annual event. Actually it needs to…

[godzilla-reads]

February Reading Challenge: Go to your shelf/stack and choose the fourth book from the beginning/top.

The book I have happened upon for my February Challenge Read is My Buddy Killer Croc by Sara Farizan and Nicoletta Baldari!

[pridepages]

Crushed: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel

I just finished Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan. I have thoughts...

Here there be spoilers!

It’s funny how the same word can mean ‘lovestruck’ and ‘damage.’ But when you read Sara Farizan’s Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, the many different ways queer love can ‘crush’ us are brought into stark relief.

The story features Leila Azadi, daughter of a traditional Persian American family who is crushed by an overwhelming secret. She is not the good daughter her parents and community expect her to be. She’s a lesbian. But Leila doesn’t dare to come out. She has seen before what that can mean:

“We found out through the Persian rumor mill that someone saw Kayvon kissing another guy at a college party...he had to come out to his parents. They didn’t take it well...the Madanis kicked Kayvon out of the house...For a while, I kept hoping someone would mention it--maybe talk about how much they liked Kayvon, or how much they missed him, but the Madanis still comes to all the parties, and it’s like Kayvon never existed. No one mentions him, because they don’t want to upset the Madanis.”

Terrified, Leila keeps her silence, struggling under the weight of her secret alone. “I wonder how long it will take mom to erase me from her memory,” she muses. But Leila’s status quo is shaken up when new girl Saskia arrives on the scene. Saskia seems untouchable: she is gorgeous, sophisticated, a world traveler, living out of a hotel with seemingly endless supplies of money and absolutely no supervision. Constantly seeking entertainment, Saskia begins to toy with Leila. But Leila cannot see that Saskia is dangerous. Because Leila is struck for the first time in her life by an overwhelming, dazzling crush.

The thing about those first crushes as a queer person is that they wake up longings you may not even realize you had. Suddenly, the closet around you no longer feels like a safe haven. You begin to resent it as a prison. “I want to stop living in fear,” Leila announces, “I want to stop coming up with excuses about why I’m not interested in dating. I want my family to know me...I want to stop feeling like everything I am is inadequate or makes me unworthy of love because of something I can’t help.”

Of course, the constant, responsible refrain is that no one should come out if it isn’t safe to do so. It’s an easy, seemingly self-evident platitude. But what safety means for one person isn’t necessarily the same for someone else. Take, for example, the experience of Leila’s classmate, Tomas:

“no one has been more out and proud than Tomas...a few guys wearing ski masks sprayed him with Silly String while calling him a fag. But after that he was taken in by the hot girls in our class...He was a fun new accessory, something you just had to have, the way celebrities adopt babies like they’re handbags. I was happy for him, but I resented the crap out of him, too.”

Humiliation is the price Tomas pays for protection. Just to be allowed to exist in the world, he has to sacrifice his pride. Leila’s resentment, in turn, is double-edged: on the one hand, there’s disgust at the treatment Tomas accepts. On the other hand, he gets to exist openly, tolerated in a way Leila believes would not extend to her since she cannot fit any Straight-acceptable stereotype.

Tomas himself, crushed by his own pain, responds to Leila’s predicament with shortsighted cruelty: “if you came out, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. You girls have it way easier. Two hot girls in high school? No problem, definitely encouraged by my straight male counterparts. However a gay guy--even one as handsome as myself? Not as cool.” Somehow, in Tomas’s mind, misogyny and objectification are easier to bear than other flavors of homophobia. Probably because misogyny and objectification don’t happen to him. It’s easy to diminish pain we cannot feel, particularly when our own heartbreak is busy making us so selfish in our suffering.

Meanwhile, Leila finds her feelings toyed with over and over by Saskia. Though she was at first lost in the high of her crush, Leila soon finds herself crushed beneath the weight of heartbreak as Saskia dismisses their intimacy. “Girls do that all the time. Haven’t you ever been to a sleepover before? Played truth or dare? Come on, Leila. We had fun, but I’m not like that.” 

Coming out for women always risks having your feelings diminished. What’s so painful to see in this book is how much Leila settles in order to find a happy ending. While Saskia is ultimately banished from Leila’s life for her toxic homophobia, Leila is stuck with her family. 

Before she comes out, Leila is forced to hear her father call “gays...those people,” and she confesses “That knocks the wind out of me. I understand it’s a cultural thing, and my father is a traditional, conservative Iranian man, but I’ve never heard him explicitly say something like that...Imagine if he knew I am one of those people.” When Leila finds herself in a position where she has to come out to her parents, her mom greets the news by saying “I didn’t raise you to be that way...maybe you will change your mind. You have your whole life ahead of you.” And we are supposed to be grateful that she didn’t just kick Leila out on the spot. We’re meant to find hope in the aftermath because “I don’t feel less loved or like she’s ignoring me, but neither one of us mentions what I’ve said.” Despite the fact that Leila’s mother is “praying a lot all of a sudden, I notice, which is weird because we’re not religious...I think she’s trying to pray that my lesbian inclinations will go away, but she never says anything about it, so I can’t know for sure.” The closest that we come to a real demonstration of Leila’s mother trying to overcome her deep homophobia is when she asks Leila “‘Is there...someone...you like?’ She can’t even say ‘a girl.’”

And Leila just keeps feeling grateful that all this represents a start to being allowed to live her truth. Considering she feared being disowned, her immediate relief is understandable. But I hope that the Leila who gets to grow up off the page realizes that she deserves more. Because if Leila thought her heartbreak over Saskia was painful, she doesn’t realize that years of being treated as someone who is ‘loved’ but who also needs to be ‘fixed’ is absolutely crushing. 

No queer person has the right to dictate the feelings or boundaries of another. I can’t condemn Leila or anyone like her, any more than I can condemn Tomas for his choices. Out or in, we have to know what we can live with. But what I do wish for all of us is that we all get to experience love free from pain. Love, instead of sitting like a crushing weight on our chest, should make us lighter.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌙 Ramadan Mubarak - Books ft. Muslims

🦇 Good morning, my beautiful bookish bats. To celebrate this Islamic holy month, here are a FEW books featuring Muslim characters. I hope you consider adding a few to your TBR.

❓What was the last book you read that taught you something new OR what's at the top of your TBR?

🌙 A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum 🌙 Amal Unbound - Aisha Saeed 🌙 Love From A to Z - S.K. Ali 🌙 Hana Khan Carries On - Uzma Jalaluddin 🌙 Yes No Maybe So - Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed 🌙 Evil Eye - Etaf Rum 🌙 I Am Malala - Malala Yousafzai 🌙 Exit West - Mohsin Hamid 🌙 Written in the Stars - Aisha Saeed 🌙 The Night Diary - Veera Hiranandani 🌙 Much Ado About Nada - Uzma Jalaluddin 🌙 The Eid Gift - S.K. Ali 🌙 More Than Just a Pretty Face - Syed M. Masood 🌙 Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero - Saadia Faruqi 🌙 If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan 🌙 Snow - Orhan Pamuk 🌙 Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged - Ayisha Malik 🌙 The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad 🌙 And I Darken - Kiersten White 🌙 The Last White Man - Mohsin Hamid

🌙 Hijab Butch Blues - Lamya H 🌙 The Bad Muslim Discount - Syed M. Masood 🌙 Ms. Marvel - G. Willow Wilson 🌙 Love from Mecca to Medina - S.K. Ali 🌙 The City of Brass - S.A. Chakraborty 🌙 The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim 🌙 A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar 🌙 A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi 🌙 An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi 🌙 The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan 🌙 The Moor’s Account - Laila Lalami 🌙 Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian 🌙 Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 🌙 When a Brown Girl Flees by Aamna Quershi 🌙 Jasmine Falling by Shereen Malherbe 🌙 Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad 🌙 Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini 🌙 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini 🌙 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 🌙 Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

🌙 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 🌙 All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir 🌙 The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik 🌙 Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin 🌙 A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif 🌙 Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi 🌙 A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena 🌙 Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga 🌙 The Mismatch by Sara Jafari 🌙 Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah 🌙 You Truly Assumed by Laila Sabreen 🌙 Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali 🌙 Once Upon an Eid - S.K. Ali and Aisha Saeed 🌙 Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan 🌙 Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson 🌙 The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar 🌙 A Show for Two by Tashie Bhuiyan 🌙 Nayra and the Djinn by Michael Berry 🌙 All-American Muslim Girl by Lucinda Dyer 🌙 It All Comes Back to You by Farah Naz Rishi

🌙 The Marvelous Mirza Girls by Sheba Karim 🌙 Salaam, with Love by Sara Sharaf Beg 🌙 Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf 🌙 How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi 🌙 Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan 🌙 Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam 🌙 She Wore Red Trainers by Na'ima B. Robert 🌙 Hollow Fires by Lucinda Dyer 🌙 Internment by Samira Ahmed 🌙 Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Love in a Headscarf - Shelina Zahra Janmohamed 🌙 Courting Samira by Amal Awad 🌙 The Other Half of Happiness by Ayisha Malik 🌙 Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy 🌙 Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed 🌙 Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed 🌙 Muslim Girls Rise - Saira Mir and Aaliya Jaleel 🌙 Amira & Hamza - Samira Ahmed 🌙 The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf 🌙 Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan

🌙 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh 🌙 Counting Down with You by Tashie Bhuiyan 🌙 Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao 🌙 The Yard - Aliyyah Eniath 🌙 When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar 🌙 The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty 🌙 Maya's Laws of Love by Alina Khawaja 🌙 The Chai Factor by Farah Heron 🌙 The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah 🌙 Hope Ablaze by Sarah Mughal Rana

[why-i-love-comics]

Buddy, Killer Croc Preview

by Sara Farizan & Nicoletta Baldari