Liquid was such an enjoyable read. The writing was propulsive and the characters were fleshed out. I’d more from this author.

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. Audiobook and narrator were fine!

I liked the premise of this book, but it ended up just being okay to me. The writing is introspective and I like the academic references, but if I had been reading this instead of listening to it, I probably would have stopped. I think it has an audience, I’m just not that audience.

Thank you NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Algonquin Books for an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

The premise of this seemed a little wild and I was excited to pick it up—I’d hoped that it would be in that little niche of unhinged woman in litfic, and I’m pleased that it did meet my expectations. Liquid really takes place in two parts: the unnamed narrator’s somewhat aimless life in LA, finishing her PhD and looking for someone to marry, and her time in Tehran after a family tragedy. The first half is definitely more vibe-y litfic whereas the second half has more of a plot, but I thought the transition between the two made sense and I enjoyed the trajectory of the novel. As difficult as the narrator can be, I liked her and thought she was compelling, if a little off her rocker.

At least in the US, this is called Liquid: A Love Story, and I think this is a love story in the same way Alone With You in the Ether is a love story, in that if you see “love story” and go “romance” or even “feel-good story with characters that are easy to love” you will be extremely disappointed. This is not that, and I liked it all the better for it, but, you know. I imagine not everyone will feel that way. Regardless, I loved this.

Liquid is narrated by the author, and while I think that at times her reading pace felt a little off, I enjoyed hearing her vision for her own work.

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, Hatchette Audio and Netgalley for this ALC in exchange for my honest review.

This story definitely wasn’t for me. The premise of the author dating a lot of people to try to marry rich just fell flat. I did enjoy the second part more when she travels to Tehran. It felt like two different books, though, that didn’t really go together.

The author narrates the book, though, which I always think is a really cool thing!

It took me a month to read this.

This is the worst book I have read all year. It was incredibly pretentious and painfully boring. It also wasn't even a love story. Maybe that was supposed to be ironic? Either way, I am not amused. I would not have finished the book if it weren't for the fact that I had an ARC. I am honestly confused on what the heck this book was trying to say and/or accomplish. I feel like I was lied to by the synopsis frankly.

Audiobook note: I know it was narrator was the author, and while I usually enjoy that for nonfiction books, it only added to my overall hatred of the book. It was so monotone and a chore to listen to.

Liquid is a sharp, witty debut that blends satire with heart. Following a disillusioned PhD grad on a quest to marry rich, the story takes a powerful turn in Tehran, exploring identity and belonging. Smart, funny, and refreshingly original.

Funny and unique. I loved listening to this one. I love a romcom and this delivered. Looking forward to more from this author.

I’ll admit that for the first few chapters, I wasn’t particularly taken with this book. I actually considered DNFing quite early on, but I stuck with it and it more than redeemed itself!

The book is split into two parts, one set in the USA and one in Iran. While the latter was much more compelling, the set-up of the first half was necessary to get there. In the first half we meet the main character and her mother (my personal favourite character), and we’re introduced to their complex relationship. The tone is fairly light-hearted, with witty observations about class, money, academia, and romance.

The tone is very different in the second half. Much like in real life, when something terrible happens, everything changes. It was very jarring but I think it was to good effect, and took the story on a sharp turn from the trajectory it had been on.

The final few chapters were the crowning glory, as the main character deals with grief, the fallout of her bereavement and inheritance, and starts to rebuild her life. The way Mariam Rahmani managed to bring all of the themes from the first half into those final chapters for the perfect full circle was masterful, and turned this from a good book into a great book.

I went into this book not really knowing what to expect, and I’m so glad I stuck with it. What started as a romcom-style story became a brilliantly observational slice-of-life story, and I absolutely loved it.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

I went into this one with curiosity, but came out feeling a bit... unsure. It was messy, not in a cute, chaotic, and slightly delulu way, but more like someone’s notes fell off the coffee table and they just ran with it. Timelines and small details didn’t always line up, and that lack of structure made it hard to stay engaged.

The main character didn’t help either. She carries herself with this air of superiority that made it difficult to connect or even care much about what she was going through.

The author narrates the audiobook herself, and while she captured the distant tone of the main character, the monotone delivery didn’t help with pacing. Jokes that might have worked better on the page fell flat in audio.

That said, there were things I appreciated. The social critique? Spot on. The spreadsheet theme? J’adore. And the shift in tone halfway through brought in deeper themes that kept me curious enough to finish, even if it took some effort.

Parts of the writing tried to build a bestie-style intimacy with the reader, but it didn’t land for me. It felt forced, and combined with moments of overly performative prose, I often felt more alienated than drawn in.

A mixed bag overall. Some clever ideas, but not quite the execution I was hoping for.

I quite enjoyed this story. I liked the premise, that our narrator is planning to marry rich, and how she plots out how to make this happen.

And while this is a story of love, it's also a critique of that love story. In the book the narrator talks about Western and Eastern ideals of love and marriage, and I feel like this story critiques both of those, and shows us something different. Even when our narrator thinks she knows what she wants, maybe that's not how this story is meant to go.

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.

I mostly listened to this one on audio, narrated by the author and I enjoyed it on audio. I think Rahmani was able to match the slightly dead inside mood of the MC well in this one.

Liquid isn’t a story you simply listen to—it’s one you absorb, like light through stained glass. Mariam Rahmani’s voice—both as author and narrator—carries a lyrical, almost hypnotic quality that draws you into a world where identity isn’t fixed, but fluid, like water shifting between containers.

This audiobook feels intimate, like overhearing someone’s innermost thoughts in the quiet dark. It's bold, tender, and unapologetically complex, exploring queerness, cultural dislocation, and womanhood with a poet’s precision and a rebel’s heart. The pacing is intentional, the silences just as powerful as the words.

Rahmani doesn’t offer easy answers—she invites you to float in the ambiguity, to feel your way through the depth of what it means to belong, to question, to become. It's the kind of listening experience that asks you to pause, rewind, and sit with the echoes.

Liquid is not just a book—it’s a meditation, a reckoning, and a quiet revolution whispered straight into your soul.

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.

First half ingadge Turing the age and did the audio
I liked the dating experiment and her hits and thoughts on her spreadsheet
Funny and a bit deep in some ways then about 50% of the book lost me took a turn sad and felt disconnected to the first half
And kept lingering one a bit to slow and long

What started out irreverent and some how also pretentious, evolved into something raw and heart wrenching with a beautiful ending.
The beginning had a lot of people thrown at you, beautiful prose and a lot of references that made me feel kind of stupid. I have a pretty good vocabulary but this one was a little beyond me. Looking back I guess that was accurate to the characters as I do not have a literary degree and they do.

All in all, it was kind of a wild ride but very unique. Thank you Netgalley for the copy of the audiobook!

An "it was always you" rom-com, but also a literary, feminist Indo-Iranian-American coming-of-age saga.

An ode to rom-coms really, with a respectful nod to English and Muslim literature and academia, both as a career and a way of life.

Includes a positive mother-daughter relationship, all things considered.

A recent PhD graduate, now adjunct professor, finds herself grappling with decisions in both her personal and professional life. Striving to please her successful mother in who is also in academia, the narrator receives word that her position will no longer be funded, and she loses her graduate student housing, thus impacting her greatly.
Determined to make changes, she embarks on an effort to go on 100 dates over the course of a summer. While this is categorized in several genres, I would caution readers who are looking for solely romance. This is a complicated novel that involves how one’s culture comes into play into making them who they are and who they wish to be.
The author narrated the audio and provided inflection and intonation where needed. Many thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.

✨ 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