Arezu returns to Spain after 20 years to her father's apartment which she has now inherited. When she was 17 she spent a summer there seeing no one but a 40 year old distant relative. Her experiences during that summer still haunt her and return more vividly when she steps into the musty, dusty apartment with her best friend.
Arezu is half American and half Iranian. Her friend is half American and half Israeli and is a support of Palestinian causes. Both women have both shared many experiences and individual experiences of love, loss and trauma.
The book has three themes. The first is of the trauma of love gone wrong, of being a victim of predatorily older man. The second is living in the West as a women from the Middle East and seeing what is wrong in both worlds. The last is the beauty of friendship.
To me the last theme worked best, the second theme needed it's own book and the first was a bit laboured. Overall though it was an impressive book

"It never ceases to amaze me how events that have germinated on one continent can be harvested in the shadows of another far, far away."

A beautifully poetic exploration of past trauma and how it shapes and impacts every area of life. Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi has a stunning writing style that almost feels like a stream of consciousness. I look forward to reading more by her.

Thank you to Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm afraid that I'm finding this book to be far too contrived (style wise at least). The narrator's self-dramatising lacks self-awareness and comes off as pretentious. I was hoping for something in the realms of You Exist Too Much but this novel isn't working for me. I'm sure many other readers will find this to be a more rewarding and captivating reading experience, sadly, I am not one of them.