I did not finish this one, it was not for me, I couldn't relate to the characters, and just did not care for the story.

This book was just ok for me. One of those books that is pretty unmemoriable once you are finished. Nothing wrong with it per se, just a little lifeless. Some real talented writing but it just seemed to hit this pace and never changed. Real shame, I really wanted to love this one.

‘Desperada’ follows 27 year old Kora, a Canadian Iranian living in Toronto consumed by the loss of her younger sister. For Kora, grief feels like a dire need to be filled, a desperate, reckless, and furious search for ‘la petite morte’.

She quits her job and travels to Flateyri, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, and Koh Pha Ngan only to find grief’s black vulture follows her everywhere she goes. Her journey of sexual self-destruction is marred by the grim realities of each place she visits, taking on an anti-travel-to-heal narrative that I found incredibly refreshing.

While reading, I kept thinking of this lyrics from LDR’s ‘Fuck it I love you”:

“So I moved to California but it’s just a state of mind, it turns out everywhere you go you take yourself that’s not a lie”.

This is precisely what Kora comes to realize in this raw and propulsive debut from an exciting new voice. ‘Desperada’ is the messy woman in their 20s narrative that I’ve been looking for.

*Thank you to @randomhousecanada and @libro.fm for the review copies*


CW: grief, death by drowning, death of a sibling, sexual assault, suicidal ideations, racism, fetishization, Islamophobia, depression/dissociation, drug use, terrorist attacks

This was okay book. I had a hard time getting into . I was more than halfway through before I really got into it. A lot of the characters weren't likeable. I understand that it was a book about grief and everyone deals with it differently. But the book was just all over the place and hard to follow at times.

This book was incredible and blew me away. It took me a while to get into it and I had no idea what to expect, but Mostaghimi’s writing is beautiful and haunting. She created an entire world of characters that felt believable and real. It follows Kora who is struggling after the loss of her younger sister who drowned when they were on a family vacation. She quits her job and goes to Iceland on a whim, then begins traveling. Desperado feels extremely internal and tightly follows Kora’s point of view. I found her delightful as a main character, which feels odd to say in a book that deals with such heavy topics. She might come across as unlikeable to some, but I appreciated being inside of her head. She was complicated and messy and lost, but she was interesting, genuine, and forgiving. I was fond of multiple side characters - Zo, Kat, and Carly especially. I thought the structure of the book, split through each place Kora visits, worked really well. The pacing was steady and Kora’s journey of avoiding her grief, dealing with it, and accepting it was beautiful. I was surprised by how much I liked the ending and would definitely recommend it.

“Desperada” by Sofia Mostaghimi is a lament for anyone who has tragically lost someone they’ve loved and for who they used to be when the people they loved were still alive. This tragic, heartrending tale talks about a kind of pain that can only be numbed by shedding the skin of the person they used to be and living life with reckless abandon. There is no doubt Mostaghimi’s debut novel is going to leave its mark on readers, giving them a new way to think about and understand the ways people deal with grief.

There is the Kora from before who lived in her little sister’s shadow, hearing all about Kimia’s wild, reckless life full of new adventures Kora could never dream of embarking on herself. Then there’s the Kora who exists after when Kimia is gone and the world will never be the way it was when she was still in it. Empty and aimless, Kora embarks on a one-way journey to faraway places where she becomes intimate with a lifestyle of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, temporary fixes, grief, abuse and suffering.

In this reckless abandon comes self-understanding, awareness, healing, and most of all: hope.

There’s no doubt Mostaghimi knows what grief is all about and the lengths it can drive people to go to numb the pain they’re in and to find meaning in their life. Kora’s story is as much of a warning as much as it is a guide to self-exploration and healing. While there are many things Kora does that aren’t admirable, it’s clear there was never any other path for her to take to come out on the other side of her grief healed.

Kora’s story shows that sometimes one has to lose sight of who they are to find themselves again.

“Desperada” is a story that would have benefited me when I was in high school. Maybe then I would’ve understood my friends better, who lost family members way too young, and whose ways of dealing with grief felt too foreign and alien for me to have grasped. Reading this book gave me insight into what they might’ve been going through and why having support isn’t always enough.

For a debut novel, this book surely packs a punch. Please be aware of this story’s content warnings before giving it a read. Saying it’s emotional is putting it mildly.

The expected publication date for “Desperada” by Sofia Mostaghimi is April 18th, 2023. This is a book highly worth the read and will no doubt stay with readers long after they’ve finished it. If this story is of interest, save it to your TBRs!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada (Random House Canada) for providing me with a free e-arc of this novel and for the opportunity to share my honest opinion in this review.