I love Nadiya Hussain. If you are a fan of The Great British Bake Off, you probably love her too. Nadiya was the winner in 2015, and she is, by all accounts the most popular winner in the history of the show. Charming, warm, funny, self-deprecating and gifted with a marvelously expressive face, she made all of us fall in love with her.
Since winning TGBBO, Nadiya has published a cookbook (which I received as a surprise present last week from a lovely friend who lives in England), presented a TV show, baked a cake for the Queen, and appeared in several talk shows. And now she has written a novel! I only found out last week because of a nasty review published by The Guardian that I’m not even going to talk about. But when I found out Nadiya had written a novel and that the blurb described it as “a kind of updated Asian Little Women“, this was literally my reaction:
Long story short, I found the Kindle version on Amazon, bought it, started reading it on Sunday and finished it the following day. I LOVED IT! The novel is called The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters and it’s about, you guessed it, the Amir sisters: Fatima (aka Fatti), twins Bubblee and Farah, and Mae.
This sounds amazing!
Btw, I’m also an only child, but often find stories about sisters exhausting.
OMG that review was such garbage. ICYMI – it boiled down to “Ugh, this isn’t interesting because it shows that non-white Muslim people like, have the same problems as white people. Besides – this other brown woman already wrote a book about sisters and so you can just read that so this other brown woman’s book won’t take valuable book store shelf space from more deserving authors.”
Nadiya for life!
I ended up reading it and you are absolutely correct, it was garbage Racist and patronizing. I mean, the lady basically told Nadiya to stay in her lane and stop “taking up shelf space”! What the what?! By the way, she ended up deleting her Twitter account after the sh*storm that followed her review…
I just went and read “that” review right after reading yours. It made me furious. The first paragraph alone almost sent me into a frenzy.
I’m putting the book on my library list, as your enthusiasm and description have sold me on it, Jenny Colgan be damned.
I’m glad my review made you want to read it, I hope you enjoy it!