Sahar and Nasrin are teenage girls in Iran, and in love with each other. Because it's Iran, however, their relationship can never come to anything... not unless Sahar takes the extremely drastic step of gender reassignment surgery (apparently the Iranian government supports and subsidises this surgery for Iran's trans citizens, which I didn't know). As a reader, it's immediately obvious that a) this is a terrible idea, as Sahar is gay but not trans, and b) she will not go through with it. I was not surprised at any point here, but I was moved.

I do find the ending particularly interesting, especially as I'm always so interested in categorising the books that I read. I am particularly fussy with romance, restricting it to those stories that are either happy-ever-after or happy-for-now, because I have a vague recollection of that being the standard of the Romance Writers Guild, and presumably they would know. The ending here isn't happy... but it's not entirely sad either. Sahar and Nasrin don't really make the shift from romantic to platonic love, and they will never act on their romantic feelings towards each other again, but they are reconciled, and the love that they have for each other is still the underpinning of their relationship. So I guess I'm coming down on the side of the romance categorisation here, because they've found a way to live and maintain as much of each other as they can, and if that resulting relationship is limited in scope, it's still critically important to both of them.