Naz Kutub

For those who are lost and remain lost, let us do our best to find them and bring them home.
Why am I here? What am I doing halfway across the world? Is it only to find Farouk? To bring him home? Like the imam said, am I purposely trying to lose myself, to find my way?

This was a fun, fast paced book. Sy and an alcoholic, chatty djinn make their way around the world at lightning speed in search of Sy’s boyfriend. As they travel from place to place, they meet a variety of people who all knew his boyfriend before he disappeared.
It touches on a lot of important subjects, like Sy rethinking his life and privileges, his mother’s inability to go against his father, queer people growing old together and the many muslims that get blamed for the few violent ones. I only wish these things were woven into the story a little more instead of being paragraphs on their own.… (plus d'informations)

teen fiction - gay Indian-American Muslim barista teen with violently angry despotic dad meets a djinn who offers to grant him 3 wishes; the "loophole" is that she is obligated to help him survive until he makes all his wishes. The plot vaguely parallels Orpheus/Eurydice (without the flute music?) which makes me think that Sy doesn't end up with his ex-boyfriend Farouk (absent through most of the story and not that endearing of a character in that way) after the somewhat-nonsensical quest that takes him to London and Turkey and beyond.

TW/CW: homophobic hate, racist interactions, physical violence, getting kicked out of home, racism by airport security, police interaction during protests, alcoholism

I liked the concept and read 200 pages or so (more than half), just couldn't really bring myself to care about Sy (who kind of reminds me of when Bella spends an entire book whining over Edward) or Reggie (the alcoholic djinn with obvious issues that will probably get addressed by the end) or the vanished Farouk (I barely knew ye, but I hope ye are ok). I did like the own-voices perspective on being brown/Muslim in an airport and brown/Muslim/queer in other circumstances, and I hope the author keeps writing more quirky books with queer brown protagonists.… (plus d'informations)

The Loophole is a modern fantasy about Sayyed, a gay Muslim teenager, trying to find his (ex-)boyfriend Farouk on the other side of the world. With the help of Reggie, who grants Sayyed three wishes, they go on a journey tracking down Farouk from London to Istanbul to Marrakech - and find more than they were expecting along the way.

I really liked the concept of bringing the djinn/genie folklore to a modern setting, and I think Kutub does a great job of showing how it's not all glitz and glam for Reggie despite her resources. The camaraderie between Sayyed and Reggie was definitely my favorite part of the book, and I really appreciated the fact that we get to see their friendship develop throughout the journey.

My main critiques center around the plot. I found it to all be very polished and neatly tied up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it felt a little off to me with this read. It was clear from pretty early on what the ending would be, and again, while that isn't inherently bad, there really wasn't a big twist at the end; the sequence follows as you'd expect from most books following the same general trope/line of plot.

Overall, this was a fun read! I do wish that there had been something I wasn't anticipating toward the end, but some readers may find this a pro rather than a con. There are definitely some potentially triggering topics discussed and shown in scenes, so if you're considering this read, please make sure you do so informed.

Thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.… (plus d'informations)