A book I was very excited to read, especially because I knew it handled difficult topics, like racism and growing up in the midst of it. Overall, I flew through it, it was a very quick read and I will amount that to the writing style, which was beautiful, but not overly flowery. Personally, I think it was the perfect balance between lyrical and simple, to the point writing.

We follow Shirin, a Muslim teen, as she navigates high school and her first relationship in post Twin Towers incident America. What I loved most about this book is how eye opening it was reading from Shirin's POV. You can never educate yourself too much about racism and I think this book does a fine job talking about such interesting and important topics.

But here comes the reason why I gave this book a 2-star rating. I believe that after a certain point, the romance overshadowed everything else. Also, after the relationship became more established, the book felt like it was more about Ocean, than Shirin. Even the title of the book is about Ocean and even though Ocean is a very well written character and I liked him, I needed more from Shirin. I needed to learn more about her family, about Persian culture, their origins, the food they love to eat, etc.

It quickly became an almost typical high school romance where drama overshadowed everything. Something else that didn't really sit well with me is the fact that it is mentioned that Shirin and her family move every year, because her dad is looking for better work opportunities. Because of these moves, Shirin has never been able to form long lasting friendships. It wasn't adequately explained though why the move, what's her dad's job, etc and it mostly felt like a plot point to have Shirin be more lonely and explain her difficulty to form relationships. Tbh, I needed a bit more validation for the yearly moves, because every parent must understand that moving houses every single year does more damage to your kid than a medium paid job.

All in all, it's an interesting book, one I would recommend since it deals with important topics and you can never have enough voices talking about racism!