Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed: book review

Written in the Stars (2015) commences in Florida, America, in the home of seventeen-year-old Pakistani-American Naila Rehman. It is the end of high school, prom night, and she is on the dance floor with Saif, whom she has known for a year. They are blissfully in love. But her parents are not happy. Livid, they arrive at the prom, and yank their daughter from the arms of her boyfriend. “It’s over,” her mother declares.

After graduation, for vacation, Naila’s parents whisk her and her fifteen-year-old brother Imran back to Pakistan, to her home village. Everyone is there to greet the Rehman family – her father’s brother and wife; her father’s sister, husband and fifteen-year-old son Sohail; her mother’s sister, husband and five children; her mother’s brother; and her cousin Selma. This is the first time her mother has been home in twenty years. Naila’s mother quickly arranges a relentless series of social engagements. She reminds Naila that “we don’t talk too loudly or too much.”

Naila’s parents extend the four-week vacation to five weeks, then another month. Naila will miss the university orientation, and she will miss Saif. Secret phone calls to Saif are brief. Selma tells Naila that her mother plans to keep her in Pakistan forever: “you’re not going back, ever.”

The parents have found a man for Naila to marry. The women of Amin’s family make wedding plans – choosing the wedding dress, and showing her the room in the family home where she will live with her husband. She considers an escape. Her father destroys her mobile phone. Her passport and money are gone. Amin is a good man, who is patient and kind, but her heart is with Saif. She writes a letter to Saif, begging him to save her.

The novel starts slowly and lacks depth and complexity. The characters are not well developed and the dialogue is over-used, but the story improves by Part 2, halfway into the novel. Even Pakistan, the village, and the culture are not as descriptive and informative as they could be. It’s a young adult novel and doesn’t progress more than its intended purpose as an expose of forced marriage, coercion, societal pressure, and parental threats.

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