Struggled a lot with how to rate and review this. I enjoyed the story and was certainly emotionally moved by it, especially as a child of immigrants, as a woman, and as someone desperately hopeful for a better tomorrow. There were many chapters and arcs I was totally gripped by (though some others less so), and I think the story is overall an important one that many in the US could benefit from reading to walk a fictional mile in the shoes of Iranian women.

However, the writing continuously frustrated me. The story spans nearly a full lifetime, and early chapters continuously pulled me out of the text with a clumsy straddling of multiple time periods: the story was from an immature MC with a highly limited perspective appropriate for a child, yet the language and observations of an adult, and peppered throughout were also moments of omniscient narration offering retrospective commentary and editorialization. Once we got into adult years a lot of that friction disappeared, but all the way through the text chapters were continuously ending with allusions to the future meant to manufacture suspense. I can understand a couple of these in the beginning to set the tone and get the reader interested, but to have the same "dun dun dunnn" about the exact same thing all the way to 75% made me feel like the author just didn't trust the reader to still be interested on their own. Frankly, it annoyed me, and ultimately had the opposite effect of breaking my immersion into the story of the book by reminding me time and time again that I was reading words written by an author.

I guess all in all I'm satisfied that I read it, and may even think of the story and some poignant moments and messages again, but I know this author is not one I'm likely to pick up again.