I can't recommend it enough! I really enjoyed this book, I couldn't put it down, I finished it in a couple of days!

I’m a bit confused by what this was trying to accomplish. It was more lit fic than love story which is normally my jam but this didn’t work for me

Mariam Rahmani’s Liquid is a literary novel that pokes fun at the conventions of literary novels while expressing enough self-awareness to recognize both the institutions of validation and space for in-depth dissection of humanities theory that the form (and its critique) enables. At its heart is a disillusioned almost-thirty year old PhD candidate grappling with both increasingly precarious job and dating markets. And I say grappling instead of struggling for a reason—Rahmani’s largely unnamed narrator spends the duration of the novel trying to claw her way to stability, to recognition, to validation of the values and priorities she has structured her whole life around. How? By deciding to go on a 100 meticulously spread-sheeted dates from all strata and tangents of LA society. But when her quest for the tangibly nebulous takes her far away to where it all began, our narrator is left with more choices than answers about what shape she wants her future to take.

If I had to make a comparison, it wouldn’t be prose. Reading this felt like slipping into a distorted space between the films Past Lives by Celine Song and Appropriate Behavior by Desiree Akhavan. The distortion is due to Rahmani’s reckoning with the creeping, growing precarity of art and its scholarship as viable careers, with the slow declines and skin-deep insecurities bred by late-stage capitalism, and what it means to live within society while being apart from, if not outright isolated* from community.

Within 304 dense but eminently readable pages, Rahmani somehow puzzle-pieces together a dizzying array of references (possibly an entire semester’s worth) from women’s-asian-middle-eastern-world-literary-medical-politics-creative-writing-gender-and-sexuality-studies**, interjected and framed with references to 90s rom-coms.

If at least 50% of that word string shows up somewhere on your CV, college transcripts, or you have experienced academic (or dating) burnout at any point, you should immediately get your hands on a copy of this book, because catharsis lies somewhere within its pages. I’d shelf this between Theodore McComb’s Uranians and Sayaka Murata’s Life Ceremony—the other two books I have recommended it to every queer grad student I know, including the ones in bio/pharma/medical fields. The parts of Liquid that are set in Iran’s hospital system are heart-wrenching and a keen window into the anxieties and emotions of people in many economically disenfranchised nations, as well as the minute, human impacts of healthcare inequity and inadequate access to basic care due to understaffing (in any country).

Whether it drolly observes the surreality of a white woman receiving tenure to talk about Black women’s literature, or the gender norms of millennial dating, Rahmani’s narrator strives to present a sort of cool detachment in both her narration and presentation, while never really being able to elide the spiky, sharp edges of her less than palatable emotions and actions. It’s dissociative feminism, if not at its finest, at it’s most reckoned with. K is a narrator who is unable to truly excise herself from the tangles of culture and heritage that have helped breed her disillusionment and alienation, her ongoing sense of performing herself for consumption and the frustrations this process engenders (heh). She wants to be disillusioned, to be rational, cool, clinical, academic, removed—all those words certain clades of bros have idealized and Barbara Kruger spent the 90s vehemently deconstructing. But she is not. She cannot.

Put simply, she does not have the privilege of doing so.

Dissociative Feminism is the term that came to mind when I was reading a piece about the rise in media marketed to conservative women, and/or women exhausted by their inability to “have it all” and looking for an emotional lifeline in distressing times. For some readers, the conclusion of Liquid might seem like an exercise in this new post-everything attitude, a capitulation to varied norms and normativities. But this is why we read—for the journey that contextualizes the ending, that gives a character’s choices emotional heft. This journey also raises more questions than the conclusion answers, making it a solid book club bet: how easy is the choice, when it seems antithetical to everything you’ve worked for? What forms do fantasies take? Or security? And what do you sacrifice in its pursuit? So many questions, despite a seemingly settled (heh) ending.

In the end, I find myself returning to a line in the author’s letter that came with the review copy—in it, Rahmani addresses the reader/reviewer and says that this novel is part of a conversation she grew up having with writers from Rumi to Tolstoy, with the self-mythologizing and stories of “smalltown Ohio”, “a city like Tehran” and a her own experiences navigating the precarious, politicized waters of humanities academia, advocating for language and expression even as funding grows scarcer and the future more uncertain***. As a reviewer, I feel this novel is best taken as a conversation rather than a prescription. Specifically, an accessible, emotionally difficult dialogue between the author, narrator and reader on complex themes of identity and relationships.

Liquid is a novel-length love letter to possibility, to familiarity, written in the throes of heartbreak and betrayal, by both the American Dream, the promises of progress, and complicated peaces. By interlocating these ideas within transnational, transgenerational and bonds, Rahmani asks us to consider the pursuit of each of these constructs, to converse with our own enmeshment to them. To consider the stories and languages that shape our own trajectories. And, resonantly, the comforts those narratives have to offer in times of conflict: internal, external, material and relational.

Who Will Enjoy This:

The aforementioned intersectional theory lovers.
Any femme who has gone through exhaustive effort to avoid epilating their upper or inner thighs while clinging onto the exhaustive demands of gender presentation with white-knuckled, perfectly manicured fingers. You will laugh, you will cringe, you might cry at the saga of K’s black tights.
Fans of Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior who wished it was set in American academia and addressed hierarchies of culture in America’s arts education/economy.
Fans of Celine Song’s Past Lives who wished it was more queer and also complicated by intergenerational emotional baggage.
Readers who want someone to commiserate with their struggles in post/graduate-level academia but do not want to burden their equally anguished classmates or peers with the weight of their emotions (few things build community like a shared vent followed by a shared meal)
Who Might Think Twice:

Readers who don’t want to read about death. It is a heavy topic. It is touched on frequently, including the emotions and unresolved memories around it.
Readers who cannot tolerate even the slightest whiff of MFA cant, itself a dialect of humanities jargon. Both feature heavily in Rahmani’s writing style, though are not its entirety. If anything, Liquid is probably the most accessible literary novel I have read after my own brief flirtation with such programs.
Readers who really cannot right now with intergenerational child-of-immigrants academic validation issues and the crushing existential dread of staring at a final/capstone/thesis paper and feeling a heavy sense of futility about your life choices. I know you’re out there. Take care of yourselves.
*Rahmani’s narrator seems almost cloistered in a world of academia and dating apps for the majority of the book, far less enmeshed or in-community with both her local queer scene and Persian one than Akhavan’s character, necessitating the need for more specific comparison to the film, and the qualifier.

**If that word salad is not reflective of your educational or recreational reading history, there is also poetry and incisive observation woven in between a deep enjoyment of 90s rom-coms and the various stories we tell about desire and love. Valentines might be over, but this book is a solid read at any time of the year, cover notwithstanding.

***One of the novel’s strengths was its ability to weave the themes of its references/homages together seamlessly and sincerely while still examining them with an analytical eye. I was especially intrigued by the repeated references to Hedayat’s Blind Owl. Itself a hybrid of Iranian and Indian influences, Blind Owl’s publication history is itself a fraught narrative of identity, of translation and localization and complications that matter only to the people whose histories they entangle. The estate translation by Naveed Noori is superior to the overly Poe-inflected Penguin one, in my humble opinion – and also better captures the sensibilities Liquid is clearly inspired by. There are sequences in that feel almost dreamlike in the way slips in and out of them, seemingly physically unscathed but always psychologically excavated. By setting the novel within the protagonist’s narration, we are made privy to the biases, limiting beliefs and cultivated passions that drive that POV character’s decisions and actions.

(For all the liberties it takes with the source material, I find myself thinking back on the way Mike Flanagan’s take on Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories asks similar questions, and opts for much more visceral metaphors in answering them)

Honestly just really disappointed about the lack of a love story. I didn't feel like there was a clear direction of what the purpose of this was supposed to be. I LOVED the cover though. I think it'd be interesting to see what else the author can put out with more of a cohesive vision and better execution.

DNF - The description and title was capturing for me. I was excited to have an ARC copy of this book. However I must say, What love story??
I could not get into this one

Liquid follows an unnamed narrator who, in spite of having a PhD is finding it hard to get a job. When her best friend jokingly suggests that she just marry someone rich, she decides to take his suggestion seriously and go on 100 dates. But when a family tragedy hits, her plans are thrown awry.

This wasn’t BAD, necessarily. But nothing happened to keep me interested in the story. The main character isn’t very interesting, and didn’t have any solid traits I can name. She didn’t feel like a real person at all. She wasn’t fully formed. I can’t tell if the author wanted me to focus on the characters or the plot more, because neither were very solid.

I thought the mission to go on 100 dates, the main reason I picked this up, would play a far bigger role in this book than it did, and I’m weirded out that this is labeled a romance and claims it’s “a love story.” I can’t emphasize this enough: THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE!!!! And on top of it all, I’m mad about the person she ended up with. I wanted her to be with the other person. But that would’ve required this book to have the overall ending I wanted. It didn’t.

Well, all I did was complain. There really wasn’t anything I liked about this book. So I guess in a way I do think this was bad

I was drawn to “Liquid” because of the rom-com plot of a woman determined to get engaged by a certain detain order to guarantee her economic security. The novel had other plans, but I suppose that is life. I did appreciate how the change about halfway through the book represented how our plans can change due to outside circumstances, and new circumstances present us with new choices and options we couldn’t have conceived of before. I found the second half of the novel more compelling than the first for this reason, although the end felt a little sudden.

I'm really not sure what to say about this one because, unfortunately, it just didn't stick with me. It feels like it took forever for me to get through it. I don't really understand where the love story in this is either. It felt like there were two separate books fit in one - like a "part 1" and "part 2" of the story. I really wanted to enjoy it and fain perspective into a life different from my own, but it just didn't allow for that.

Thank you to Mariam Rahmani, Algonquin Books and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the eARC! This book was released in the US on March 11, 2025.

This book is messy, cerebral, deeply Muslim, and brutally honest. And while I didn’t always know where it was going—or even what was happening—I admire the ambition of its chaos.

In Liquid: A Love Story, Mariam Ramani crafts a biting, meandering portrait of a queer Iranian American academic caught at the intersection of structural precarity, inherited trauma, and romantic longing. The narrator, fresh off her PhD in a field her adjunct salary cannot sustain, embarks on a quest to locate a statistically significant spouse—one hundred dates, fourteen weeks—while dodging Islamophobia, parental expectations, and the emptiness of gig academia. The absurdity is intentional, and often funny, but what lingers most is the ache beneath the narrator’s dry wit.

Ramani’s prose is dense and self-aware, toggling between dissertation-like analysis and poetic reflection. References to Said’s Orientalism, the ethics of arranged marriage, and the politics of the hijab sit alongside awkward first dates and hot girl app fatigue. There are sapphic flings, the messy gravity of a best-friend situationship, and a syllabus on chick flicks that might’ve been my favorite subplot. The narrator’s dry, sardonic narration kept me hooked even when the plot felt like it was slipping through my fingers.

Around the halfway mark, the novel pivots hard. After her father’s heart attack, the narrator flies to Iran, where the tone and stakes change completely. The narrative slows down, becomes more embodied, more tender. The chaotic energy of the first half gives way to grief, inheritance, and ancestral longing. It’s jarring—but maybe necessarily so. Love, after all, isn’t tidy. Neither is diaspora.

Liquid never quite coalesced for me structurally, and I wish the transitions had been cleaner. But Ramani is doing something ambitious here: interrogating how capitalism, academia, and empire distort even our most intimate desires. If you’re okay with a little narrative disarray in exchange for big ideas and biting prose, this one’s worth wading into.

📖 Read this if you love: dry wit layered over emotional vulnerability, anti-capitalist academic fiction, and messy diasporic intimacy.

🔑 Key Themes: Islamophobia and Diaspora, Love and Financial Precarity, Academia and Class Tension, Queer Longing and Belonging, Marriage and Modernity.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Infidelity (minor), Alcohol (minor), Mental Illness (minor), Sexual Content (minor), Drug Use (moderate), Medical Content (moderate), Death of a Parent (severe), Vomit (minor).

DNF at 33% - this book was not for me. The writing style was overly lyrical, and I didn't feel connected at all to the main character. I feel that by the time I get into a third of the book I should be able to understand at least part of the character's actions.

This was unfortunately a DNF :( I couldn't get into it, which isn't a fault of the author or story, just that it wasn't for me. It stinks I have to give a star review on something I didn't finish, especially considering this book will definitely be loved by others.

The cover was what attracted me to Liquid, but it ended up being just ok for me. The prose wasn't terrible, but largely too academic and pretentious for my taste. I did enjoy learning more about Iranian culture and thought the ending was sweet. It's advertised as a romantic comedy, but I couldn't find the romance or the comedy.

Thanks to NetGalley & Algonquin Books for the ARC.

Jaded academic spiraling sad girl lit with a side of identity and belonging issues A combo like this is my catnip and I will never stop picking up variations of these tropes. I think the subtitle “A Love Story” sort of adds genre expectations that don’t get met in the classical sense. There is a quest for love (or at least a good pairing), but it definitely comes through in the form of figuring out one's self and this one is heavy on the lit fic. Rahmani’s does something unique here. Things are very different and more carefree in the LA part of the book and the shift to Tehran comes abruptly and with a tone change. I can see this being a bit jarring to some readers but it felt very realistic to me given the context. Rahmani used the contrast as an opportunity to explore how who we are gets impacted by circumstances and location.

Imagine if your PhD thesis on marriage led you to dating for a summer. That's the quirky, chaotic heart of Liquid, Mariam Rahmani's debut that is equal parts sharp social commentary and laugh-out-loud satire.

Our unnamed narrator - an Iranian-Indian American academic - is stuck in adjunt purgatory, so she does what any rational person would do: she decides to date 100 people, marry rich, and make a project out of it. From dodging bad breath on awkward dates to matching wits with trust fund socialists, she dives headfirst into the shallow end of romance, armed with spreadsheets and lofty ideals.

What starts as a funny social experiment quickly spirals into something more profound when the narrator is forced to confront her own contradictions - academia, love, family, identity - all as she races toward Tehran. Rahmani's prose is bold and witty, but under the laughs, there's a deep sadness lurking that makes this more than just a rom-com romp.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced digital copy from Algonquin Books ahead of the release date, and while I loved the wit, charm, and complexity, I ended up giving Liquid a solid 3.75 stars (rounded up to 4).

I love books like this that really dive into an imperfect narrator/main character. This book is great for fans of The Coin by Yasmin Zaher.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7406875013


Liquid is the smartest novel I have read recently. Rahmani’s use of beautiful prose is effortless. She speaks to the millennial dating experience in an honest way that hearkens back to the best 00’s romantic comedies. Liquid also honors the grief and pitfalls of modern life. The love story of its’ title pays off massively In the book’s final pages. This book marks the emergence of a fantastic new literary voice. Highly recommended.

This book felt simultaneously very familiar and creative. Underemployed academic dates in order to find a rich spouse, while dissecting her family's cultural inheritance and watching a lot of rom coms.

This book is a rom-com turned out its head. It follows a struggling adjust professor in LA who studies culture decides to go on 100 dates in an effort to marry rich. In the end, it turns out to be about much more about her Muslim identity.

This book was possibly too smart for me. It also felt like two separate books and the pacing was strange. By the end, the 100 date thing was barely a plot line, which I didn't mind, expect for the way it was marketed. I also thought the ending of "who she ends up with" was a bit predictable, but maybe that's the point.

Overall, this felt a bit disjointed and I'm unsure about how this one came together plot-wise. But I found Rahmani's writing engaging and even a little sexy. I would try another book by her.

Some beautiful writing here for sure, but definitely think the back cover copy is misleading. I wasn’t expecting this to be a rom com, but I also wasn’t expecting it to turn into such a somber reflection on grief. For me, the first and second halves of this book just didn’t work together, but I think this could appeal to those looking for something a little more lit fic.

✨ Review ✨ Liquid by Mariam Rahmani

Thanks to Algonquin Books, Hachette Audio, and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

The Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid is an underemployed adjunct professor with a best-friend poet Adam trying to figure out how she’s going to survive in Los Angeles without a job. She decides golddigging is the solution -- she decides to go on 100 dates over the summer to try to find a rich spouse, but ultimately, her dating finds LA’s rich men and women are predominantly white, boring, not adequate, etc.

The story shifts after her dad has a heart attack and she ends up on a plane back to Tehran, living in his home, while he’s in the hospital. It explores her relationships with her mom and her dad, and a neighbor who she hooks up with multiple times while staying there. I really appreciated the reflection on 21st-century Tehran, and the legacies of its fraught relationship with the US (lack of access to hospital equipment, uneven gendered rights, etc.).

This is a hard book because I loved it and I hated it - it made me laugh so hard and roll my eyes at the portrayal of academia, because it's so on the nose! But it's also so highbrow and critical that sometimes it over-the-top frustrated me. I loved the idea of a golddigging underemployed academic, whose PhD is in marriage and literature. I am obsessed with the focus on the dating spreadsheet (and even more with the spreadsheet excerpt that appears between parts of the book). But I also wanted to put this down and quit repeatedly too and that makes it hard to rate. In the end, I'm glad I stuck with it, but it was not an easy journey...which is maybe some of the point. This is a book to read and struggle with, but it's not for the light of heart.

Genre: literary fiction
Setting: Los Angeles, Tehran
Pub Date: March 11, 2025