There have been a few books this year that I’ve called my favorite or the best book I’ve read all year, but A Very Large Expanse of Sea takes the cake. The more I got to know people, the more I realized we were all just a bunch of frightened idiots walking around in the dark, bumping into each other and panicking for no reason at all. Her story is one you won’t want to leave. She’s snarky, relatable, and still manages to keep her head straight on her shoulders despite everything that’s thrown at her. Shirin’s experiences are based on Tahereh’s, which makes me think I would love to be best friends with Tahereh. And sure, that makes Shirin’s life much more difficult, but is one really living if we’re not experiencing the ups and downs that come with love? A wall is good protection, but it’s certainly not letting in any light. But this boy with a strange name manages to find a crack and break that wall down. Where Ocean is naive yet open and bold, Shirin has wrapped her anger around herself like the thickest wall, thinking it will be enough to protect her. Their relationship is almost Romeo and Juliet-esque, but thankfully no one dies in the end. I was stuck in another small town, trapped in another universe populated by the kind of people who’d only ever seen faces like mine on their evening news, and I hated it.īut then there are those people who are so good, they help to block some of that bad stuff out.

And I never thought I’d say that about a book with so much breakdancing. It’s been a while since a book with as much substance as this one has drawn me in so completely.

What a beautiful, raw, heart-breaking, yet somehow uplifting story. If you do nothing else the rest of this year, you must read this book. What you might not think of is the genuine, emotional, fully seated-in-reality powerhouse that is A Very Large Expanse of Sea. ❤️Ī post shared by tahereh mafi on at 12:34pm PDT AVLEOS is the most personal book i’ve ever written. seven years later and i’m about to publish my eighth book and it’s hard not to reflect on a myriad of things. there was no one to talk to or turn to or rely on. i’d never heard of a Muslim woman on the YA bestseller list, never seen a woman in hijab on book tour. no one had ever given me permission to do this, to simply write books for fun, for pleasure-to make a career out of it. never seen a YA author who looked like me. i’d never heard of a YA author who looked like me. mostly i remember being terrified and feeling very alone. I sold my first book when i was 23, a veritable lifetime ago.

A very large expanse of sea