Asgar’s writing is so lyrical and beautiful. I saved reading the last section for a few days because I didn’t want it to end. This comes out tomorrow and I'm so excited that I finished it just in time! Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I do feel that Kausar’s story was unfinished and may stay up tonight thinking about her.

I loved it but wish the ending had a little bit more to it. The story itself is heartbreaking and left me feeling empty at the end. This novel’s lyrical prose was beautiful and I liked that it didn’t stick to one format as well. It is told from Kausar’s perspective and we see how she navigates her feelings on gender, family, religion, and trying to find a place for herself in the world. They went through so much abuse, neglect, loss, and sexual assault.

It follows them as children and into adulthood - showing how everything has affected them. Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar deal with their problems in their own way, struggling together but also on their own.

The story follows their intense bond and how they are inseparable as they are all they have.

Three orphaned sisters are left to raise each other. When We Were Sisters tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, names the perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who've lost everything might still make homes in each other. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her crybaby younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms.Īs Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow, and codependency she's known or carve out a new path for herself. In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in America in this lyrical debut novel from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us

Nickel and dimed cliff notes