Review: A Sister to Honor by Lucy Ferriss

Title: A Sister to Honor
Author: Lucy Ferriss
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Berkley
Publish Date: January 6, 2015
Source: I received a copy from the publisher; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a fiction fan.
• You like learning about different cultures.
• You like family stories.
• You want to read a very emotionally charged story.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Afia Satar is studious, modest, and devout. The young daughter of a landholding family in northern Pakistan, Afia has enrolled in an American college with the dream of returning to her country as a doctor. But when a photo surfaces online of Afia holding hands with an American boy, she is suddenly no longer safe—even from the family that cherishes her.

Rising sports star Shahid Satar has been entrusted by his family to watch over Afia in this strange New England landscape. He has sworn to protect his beloved sister from the dangerous customs of America, from its loose morals and easy virtue. Shahid was the one who convinced their parents to allow her to come to the United States. He never imagined he’d be ordered to cleanse the stain of her shame..."

My Two Cents:

"A Sister to Honor" is one of those books that just sucks you in from the very beginning. It is a story of cultural clashes, honor, and family. At the center of the book is Afia, a Pashtun Pakistani woman who comes to Smith College in the United States to study to be a doctor. She falls for a guy in a way that would be totally okay for any American girl to do but for a Pakistani woman brings shame to her family. Shahid, her brother, was supposed to protect her and her dishonor is his to take care of now in order to absolve the shame from their family. This was a very powerful story that had me turning the pages as quickly as I could to see what would happen to Afia.

Afia is a fascinating character. She is torn between two worlds. On one hand, she loves her new found freedom as a college student in America. She struggles between wanting to do all of the things that her new friends do while trying to keep the customs of her family and home country. It is an incredible amount of pressure. I really felt for her throughout the book. It was a little hard for me to understand why she made the choices that she made until the author was able to show just how ingrained some of her beliefs were.

This book had a lot of twists and turns, which I really enjoyed as they kept me on my toes. I love learning about different places and cultures so I liked all of the detail that the author included about where Afia, Shahid, and their other very evil brother, Khalid, came from and what their family life in Pakistan was like.

This is definitely a book that I am going to be thinking about for a long time. The conclusion of the book definitely made me think (and of course, I don't want to give anything away so I will leave it there). This wasn't an easy read in a lot of places due to some of the brutality but I found that the author's detail was necessary in order to really understand what was going on.