A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. I enjoyed Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi, her style of writing and characters creation, and more. And most of all the way she creates love stories between the characters are truly amazing, I love her books. So let's begin with the summary. 

This is after the tragic events of 9/11, a teenager girl Shirin has been moving from one town to the other and no matter what she always gets stereotyped, people would bully her, call her horrible name, gets awful comments and rude stares. She even faced physical violence. And so Shirin finds a way to protect herself and not get close to anyone at school until she meets Ocean James, the first person who wants to know her and that terrifies her which leads to pushing him away all the time until she couldn't do it anymore. 

Shirin has realized the only way to guard herself is wearing a hijab, she wouldn't miss a single a day of not wearing it, she believed that it was the only way to protect herself. And to keep herself busy she practices her break-dancing with her brother and his friends and listens to music in class. When she met Ocean, she expected typical rude comments or the usual stereotype she faces all the time but what she didn't expect is him being so nice and kind. She was afraid of getting close to him because Ocean would be dragged into her mess but he didn't care, he didn't care what other people would think of white guy dating a Muslim girl. All he wanted was to spend time with her, one of the reasons I love this character. Another reason is he would defend Shirin whenever she faces people being mean to her.

One of my favourite quotes is 'If the decisions you've made have brought close to humanity, then you've done the right thing' this talks about Shirin choosing the right thing to do, protecting Ocean from the consequences he was going through just to be with her. 

So to conclude a Muslim girl Shirin meets Ocea James, the more close they get the more scared she gets of him dealing with the mess she is going through. 

Here are the similar books to read - 

One the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Internment by Samira Ahmed

Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

I give this book 4.9/5 ratings. This is historical fiction and I love it, I cant wait to read the next book. I hope everyone has a good day and I will see you soon.