★★★★
I love coming of age novels, so after seeing this book on an Instagram post, I immediately googled and read a few book reviews to get a sense of the book. One of the reviewers wrote that he was surprised the book was so tame despite the burgeoning relationship in the novel – I immediately bought the book that day. I have never been able to relate to the intense sexual awakenings that feature in so many coming of age novels set in American universities, so I was so delighted to discover this book.
The protagonist, Selin, is the daughter of Turkish immigrants who is starting her first year at Harvard as a linguistics major. She is very dedicated to her studies, but also finds friends in her suitemates and Svetlana, who she meets in a class. She also meets Ivan, a Hungarian student three years her senior, and begins conducting somewhat of a flirtation with him via email. This flirtation leads to a summer spent teaching English in a small village in Hungary.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of this book- I churned through about 300 pages on a single train ride. Selin is naive, but the naïveté is so believable that I kept remembering my own college days. She is passionate about academics, and feels everything so deeply that it only makes sense she would begin conducting an online romance through discussions of academic topics. Maybe I’m too similar to Selin, but some parts of this book felt like they were describing my own experience- if you were inexperienced, shy, and bookish during college, this book is for you. The beginning stages of her romance with Ivan is compelling due to Selin’s internal thoughts, even if her perspective isn’t necessarily the truth.
During the second half of the book, it becomes clear that this novel is about the stories we tell ourselves, how the people we meet become characters, and how those are so rarely the true story. Those final 100 pages took me a while to get through, but it was worth it. A wonderful book detailing the internal world of a young woman in a way that is rarely expressed in literature. Highly recommended.
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