Synopsis:
Lahore, Pakistan. Then.
Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.
Juniper, California. Now.
Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.
Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever.
When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.
From one of today’s most cherished and bestselling young adult authors comes a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness—one that’s both tragic and poignant in its tender ferocity.
I’ll survive this. I’ll live. But there’s a hole in me, never to be filled. Maybe that’s why people die of old age. Maybe we could live forever if we didn’t love so completely. But we do. And by the time old age comes, we’re filled with holes, so many that it’s too hard to breathe. So many that our insides aren’t even ours anymore. We’re just one big empty space, waiting to be filled by the darkness. Waiting to be free.
Oh, this review is so long overdue. It's been a month since I read this for buddy reading in one of the book clubs I'm in, and I still think about it every now and then. This was on my TBR list for so long. I think I even read this at one point in my life, but then decided to put it down because I wasn't ready for it. I found the beginning of the story slow and somewhat reminiscent of Tahereh Mafi's A Very Large Expanse of Sea, which I really loved.
I think I read it at the right time, looking back, because somehow, some messages in this book resonated with me because of what I'm going through internally. Just like both of the main characters, there is a huge rage inside of me because of life circumstances that I have no control over. Sometimes, it feels like the rage is so overpowering that it consumes my being, making me someone I don't recognize.
I devoured this book. I cried. I ached. I was angered and triggered. I went through a lot of different emotions, up and down and up and down. It was like being on a perpetual Viking ride. That moment when you're not quite on top yet but not quite in the middle, the one where your stomach feels fine for now but then it flips over, and you feel like throwing up and tearing up at the same time. That's how this book made me feel.
It was hard-hitting but at the same time heartwarming. Two extremes that I wasn't expecting to get when I decided to pick it up.
Rage can fuel you. But grief gnaws at you slow, a termite nibbling at your soul until you're a whisper of what you used to be.
The writing was exquisite. There were lines I wanted to tattoo in my brain because of how impactful they were. I loved the different perspectives and the flashbacks to the past that connected it to what's happening in the present. The plot was well fleshed out, and the execution was perfect.
I didn't know how it would end, but that ending was very realistic, and I loved it. I only have positive things to say about this book. Read it if you haven't yet!
My Goodreads review right after finishing it:
All My Rage - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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