A Book Review Starring "If You Could Be Mine" by Sara Farizan

The Short Version:
Set in Tehran, Iran, seventeen year old Sahar is in love with her best friend Nasrin. When she learns that Nasrin is going to be married, she discovers the answer to her problem in an obscure Iranian law in which the government will pay for gender reassignment surgery if someone is truly declared transgender, not born into the body of the gender they identify with.

The Long Version:
The long, convoluted version being that Sahar magically decides to get gender reassignment surgery so she can be with Nasrin. Even though it's plain as day that Nasrin, nor her middle class, aspiring family would ever go along with such a deal. And she comes upon this magical solve to her problem because she just happens to meet a friend of her shady cousin's who is transgender at the perfect moment when all this is coming to fruition. And this person, whose name I forget, just happens to take Sahar under her wing and along to her support group where she discovers this great law that she thinks she's magically going use to her advantage. Oh, and the wedding is in a few weeks.

You get the sense the author learned about this (albeit fascinating) law in Iran, which sounds totally antithetical to an oppressive Islamic regime, and then decided to build a story about it. Even though the story never made sense. It's a fascinating law, and someone could make a fascinating story based on it. But this wasn't it.

I had a hard time believing much about this story, from the characters' choices to the convenient plot developments. Sahar was likeable and sympathetic enough, but she never felt real.

What I found equally problematic, having nothing directly to do with the novel, was that this book is on plenty of Transgender YA booklists and Sahar is not a transgender person. She only wants gender reassignment surgery so that she can marry her best friend, she never identifies as a man either before or during the story. Nor did I find any of the transgender-related elements that are in the story very authentic, from the supporting transgender woman who takes Sahar under her wing to the other transgender person in the support group. I'd file this under Lesbian YA.

And I will.