Hana Khan Carries On

Written By Linda Malek

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
Reviewed by Tanya
📕📗📘📙

Thank you @atlanticbooks for this copy!💛

You’ve got mail but make it Muslim! I couldn’t put this book down; I didn’t know how Uzma would top #AyeshaAtLast but I enjoyed this one SO much more. I lived for the drama, the halal romance and everything else in between. I loved the representation of being Asian/Muslim. It felt very real.

Hana didn’t hate her religion, nor did she have overbearing strict parents who she was trying to escape from and didn’t whip off her hijab at any chance for some guy! Her parents and sister were supportive throughout the book with career choices and encouraged her to keep going with her podcast which was so refreshing to read.

I feel like the best way of describing Hana is normal. Just a normal Muslim girl and I mean that in a good way! I think the only thing I would change would have been her dress sense/hijab style lol it seemed very old school to me but apart from that I liked her.

I liked that it wasn’t just about her love interest Aydin (who sounded like a right hottie!) but about her love for her family, their family business, how Hana and the community dealt with islamophobia.

Hana’s family-run halal restaurant is on its last legs. So, when a competitor gets ready to open close by, she turns to her anonymous-hosted podcast and strikes a friendship with one of her listeners for advice. But a hate-motivated attack on their neighbourhood complicates things further, as does Hana’s attraction to Aydin, the owner of the rival restaurant - who might not be a stranger after all!
One thing for sure is, I must try Biryani Poutine. I have this odd feeling that I’ll love it! ☺️

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Previous

Hana Khan Carries On

Next

One of Them: An Eton College Memoir