Review: The Bad Muslim Discount

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I will start by saying that I am not a Muslim, a Pakistani, or an Iraqi; I found this to be a challenging read because of that. This may also be a better book for those who aren't right-wing Republicans!
I found that there was absolutely nothing at all humorous about this book and the synopsis was very misleading.

This book deals with many issues that Muslims deal with in their own countries -then it speaks of how certain Muslims are dealt with in the USA.

I honestly did not like any of the characters except for perhaps a few of the secondary characters.
I tried to feel empathy or sympathy, especially with Azz/Safwa, but I just couldn't. Then I found this quote:
Azza/Safwa- "But you Americans never think much about who may get hurt, as long as you get what you want." and found myself liking her even less since that is what she had been doing throughout this whole book.

I did learn a lot from this book, and I was curious enough to see how it ended, so that is what kept me from giving it a two-star review.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author. 

SYNOPSIS: "Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, Bad Muslim Discount is a hilarious, timely, and provocative comic novel about being Muslim immigrants in modern America. For fans of Hanif Kureshi, Mira Jacob, and Mohammed Hanif.

It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalists in the government become increasingly strident and the zealots next door start roaming the streets in gangs to help make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. The irony is not lost on Anvar that in America, his deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother are the ones who fit right in with the tightly knit and gossipy Desi community. Anvar wants more.

At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl suffocating in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. These two narratives are intrinsically linked, and when their worlds come together, the fates of two remarkably different people intertwine and set off a series of events that rock their whole community to its core.

The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, dramatic, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed Masood examines quirky and intense familial relationships, arranged marriage, Islamic identity, and how to live together in modern America."