Love, Hate & Other Filters // a romance with a deeply personal look at family, cultural disconnect, and Islamaphobia

Love, Hate & Other Filters was a lovable, relatable, and moving read. Romance is not my genre, and I tend to avoid it if I can help it, but the promise of an #OwnVoices look at an Indian-American Muslim teen facing Islamaphobia drew me in, and the rest of the novel refused to let me go.

The story is about Maya, a seventeen year old girl struggling to balance the life her parents hope for her to have with the life she wants for herself. The relationship between Maya and her parents, as well as her aunt Hina, was such an interesting dynamic. Maya clearly wants to make her parents happy, but her passion about film making and living with two cultures means that she doesn't always do as they expect or desire. 

For the first half of the book, the story is almost entirely a romance. I was kind of nervous about this, because romance books aren't normally my thing. But I adored this love story! I loved how Kareem became a brother to Maya despite them meeting on different terms. And Phil was actually the sweetest. Even though he seems like the typical unattainable jock guy, he and Maya have such a strong connection. Often I find when romance is the main plot, everything else in the story feels written around that. But this didn't read like a love story with college and family and movie references thrown in. It felt real, and the connection between the characters felt real. Their relationship was fluffy and made me smile.

The way that Samira Ahmed deals with Islamaphobia in the novel is powerful and very genuine. The sections at the end of every chapter leading up to the terror attack were haunting, and the treatment Maya's family faces due to their religion was terrifying. It wasn't quite to the level of political and social discussion as The Hate U Give, which was the impression I got from the blurb, but it was a very real experience. The thoughts on this were so profound, and the author definitely did it justice. 

I would have liked to have seen more of how Islam is a part of Maya's life. She identifies as a Muslim, but I would have been interested to see more of what that meant to her. I also I kind of hoped that there would be a stronger sense of Maya finding a balance between her home life and her love/social/school/college life rather than them being utterly separate. I am from a Muslim family and I know that finding that balance between cultures isn't easy, but it is possible for them to coexist. Yet I feel like in this book they were kept mostly as two separate worlds. Having said this, the final chapters end on a hopeful note, and this open ending was filled with possibility.

Love, Hate & Other Filters is ultimately a romance novel with a deeply personal look at family, cultural disconnect, and Islamaphobia. The protagonist's experiences are relatable, and the story is filled with movie references and brilliant cinematic framing that pulls you straight into the story.

★★★★☆

YA Contemporary Romance

Standalone

Indian-American Muslim Protagonist

Racial and religious slurs, bombing, terror attack, death, hate crimes, violence, blood

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