Review: Sofia Khan is NOT Obliged by Ayisha Malik

Goodreads rating: 3.82/5

My rating: 4/5

Sofia Khan is a hijabi publicist living in London who, like every other Desi girl, is being asked about when she is going to get married! Her failed engagement accidentally becomes the inspiration for a Muslim dating book that she is tasked with to write which leads her to creating a profile on a networking website for people looking for potential marriage proposals. She meets some interesting people through the website whom she refers to as research material but with all the chaos that occurs in a Desi household, she's unable to find the peace she needs to write her book. Someone unexpected offers a solution to her problem and a friendship blooms, one that she doesn't see developing into anything further, especially since she's written off men. That is, until she realizes how she feels when she's about to get married.

Duuuuude, this book was waaaaay too funny. First of all, I don't think I've ever read a book with a muslimah character. I'm so glad that my first is Sofia Khan because I just love her! She is strong, funny, intelligent, religious, a bit fickle, caring and lovable. I don't think I've ever related to a character as much as I did with her, I'm not saying that I'm all those things that I just said she is. I'm saying, the way she thinks, reacts and decides is somewhat similar to the way I do. For example, one thing that's very important to me when it comes to work is having a place to pray my daily prayers. I know that in UAE it's a lot easier than it is for Sofia in UK though so I'm super impressed by her. Also, I think almost every Desi girl can relate to this - having to deal with people constantly asking when marriage is going to happen. It's basically the main theme of this book.

I have so many good things to say about this book, I will try my best to get through all the positive points without rambling.

One, Ayisha Malik did a great job at developing the characters for this book. Any reader would be able to grasp the characters' personalities from the language used in their dialogue. For example, Sofia's mom couldn't speak proper English before moving to London so her lines were mostly a mix of both Urdu and broken English. She even asks, "What is this.. click?" after a series of responses upon asking about how dates went mostly went along the lines of, "It was nice, but we didn't click". Sometimes, I'd even imagine their voices and accents while reading, Malik's writing was quite vivid. I could even feel the shift in aura or mood in Sofia from the way Malik made her speak after a tragic event occurred. Next to Sofia, my favourite characters were Naim and Conall while the character I liked the least was Sofia's friend, Hannah. For someone who was marrying an older married man, she was quite immature in my opinion.

Two, did I mention how funny this book is? I literally laughed out loud multiple times while reading this book. Below is an excerpt that made it so difficult to stop laughing around 8 am, I had stayed up all night reading and was trying my best not to wake anyone from my loud laughing.

Okay, I know, its not exactly an excerpt; it was almost the whole page. Wasn't it worth reading though? I hope you're laughing!

Three, this book was not predictable. I kind of spoiled it for myself so I'm going to warn you not to do what I did, which was to read the synopsis of the second book. Midway through the book, just when I thought I figured out who Sofia was going to marry, I found out I was wrong when I read the blurb of book two. I wasn't too disappointed though because there were still plenty of plot twists to surprise me after that mistake. But that still proves how unpredictable the book story is since I guessed wrong about who her future partner would be.

There was only one thing that left me a little confused. I don't think it's too big a spoiler so I'm going to mention it anyway. Toward the end of the book, Sofia quits her job. I couldn't understand why because she didn't seem to have any trouble with work. Maybe Malik ran out of ideas for how Sofia would later leave on an adventure? I don't know. Other than that, I have absolutely no criticism for this book.

I also loved the way it was written. The book was like Sofia's diary, starting from September and ending with August the next year. Each chapter consisted of her daily entries at different times of the day. Coincidentally, the book started at the end of Ramadan and ended with Ramadan which it is in the real world right now so I guess I picked the perfect time to read it.

I went nuts trying to figure out how I would get my hands on the second book, by the way. Amazon's Kindle version wasn't available and nobody was selling it secondhand; a brand new copy is just too expensive for my empty wallet at the moment. It also was not available on Scribd. I have resorted to signing up on Audible and using their 1 month free trial to listen to the book for free. I can imagine it would be amusing listening to the rest of Sofia's story but with all the dates and time stamps, I was really hoping to read it like a diary would be read. It's okay though, beggars can't be choosy. I might just buy a secondhand copy when the world's feeling better.

This book was full of humour and Ayisha Malik's writing was lucid, which makes this book the perfect read for anyone who's looking for an easy and funny read. It also gives non-Muslims a perspective of the Muslim dating scene without making it seem so devastating. More importantly, it was about love in all forms - friendship, family and life partners. It was realistic and made me laugh and cry, easily making it one of the best contemporary fictions I've read. With only 3225 ratings on Goodreads and an overall of 3.82/5, this book is definitely underrated. I would recommend this to women of any age and culture, I'm not so sure men would be interested in this.

If you do decide to pick this up and to help me make it a little more popular, I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did!