I received an ALC from Harper Audio in exchange for an honest review.
Release date: June 23, 2020
Rating: 3/5
Take a A Hint, Dani Brown is the second book in the Brown Sisters series, but it can be read as a standalone. I picked up this book because it is an interracial romance with POC, which is rare in the romance genore. My review is broken down into 3 parts: 1) the story and romance, 2) the Muslim representation, and 3) the audiobook narration.
Story and romance:
Danika Brown and Zafir Ansari are friends. Zafir is a former Rugby player who now works as a security guard at the university where Dani is a PhD student. When a fire drill goes wrong and Dani gets stuck in an elevator, Zaf comes to her rescue. Students catch them on camera and they go viral with the hashtag #DrRugbae. Dani and Zaf decide to fake a public relationship to help Zaf’s sports charity, which is gaining a lot of well-deserved media attention.
The romance is cute, sweet, and steamy. The characters are likable, especially Zaf who’s basically a grumpy cinnamon roll. The writing is funny and witty, with a lot snappy dialogues. The banter is great, but sometimes a bit too long-winded…to the point where I would forget the actual topic of conversation. It’s also interesting to note that this book gender flips the tired trope of the commitment-phobe: it’s the heroine who likes casual flings and refuses to commit. But I realized that not even the gender flip can make me like this stupid trope.
I’m not gonna lie: the romance lost me about halfway through because of Dani’s issues with commitment. I like how Dani and Zaf are supportive of each other, but I feel like scale was heavily tipped towards Dani. Zaf was constantly taking care of Dani and he was always walking on eggshells around her because he didn’t want to scare her off with his feelings. Then the climax happens and she ends up hurting this teddy bear of a man and I wasn’t here for it. I was also EXTREMELY BOTHERED by the fact that Zaf thought he was the one who had hurt her…when it’s clear as day that SHE was the one who had hurt HIM. Come. On.
I will say though that the epilogue is probably my favourite thing next to Dani overhearing Zaf’s romance audiobook.
Muslim representation:
Zafir is from a Muslim family and it sounds as if his sister-in-law and his niece are practicing, even if he isn’t. Personally, I didn’t relate to Zaf as a Muslim because we lead completely different lifestyles. But there are westernized Muslims like Zaf out there who might find him relatable, so it’s not my place to say that the representation is completely shoddy on that end. Now, if Zaf was described as a practicing Muslim and led this type of lifestyle, then I would have plenty to say lol.
Zaf also has a Muslim best friend and a couple of Muslim teenagers that he coaches. I do take issue with some aspects of the Muslim representation. Let’s talk about whitewashed nicknames for Muslim people. I hate it. Listen, shortening Zafir to Zaf is fine because it makes sense. But in what fucking world does a South Asian Muslim family give a girl named Fatima the nickname FLUFFY?? Unless the family is 100% whitewashed, this isn’t happening. It’s also borderline offensive because the name Fatima has meaning in Islam. Does the author know the significance of the name Fatima? Probably not. And then there was the clown Usman whose named turned into Uzzy and I almost had a stroke reading it.
All this to say: Stop 👏🏾 whitewashing 👏🏾 Muslim 👏🏾 names 👏🏾 Yes, I am aware some Muslims like messing up their names, but most Muslims, including myself, hate it. It’s like the author is pointing 👉🏾 “Let’s make the Muzzlims relatable to the Western people.” Please stop. This author is LUCKY she didn’t write a character named Muhammad who shortens his name to Mo. That would have been an instant DNF.
I will give Talia Hibbert one point though: unlike a few white authors I’ve read in the past, she’s not scared of using the word “hijab.”
Edited to add this since I received some additional questions about the Muslim representation:
It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but I think the Islamic expressions like “Insha’Allah” and “Alhamdulillah” were used correctly, context-wise. As for Zaf’s sister-in-law, her entire arc confused me, which I should have probably touched upon in my original review. It sounded as if she was a practicing Muslim, but her relationship with Zaf’s friend confused me a lot. I couldn’t tell how serious the relationship was, or what type of relationship it really was, so that’s why I didn’t talk about it in my review. I could be misremembering though.
Audiobook:
The narrator is actually great…but only as a Western narrator. It’s clear that the narrator didn’t bother learning how to properly pronounce Islamic words like Alhamdullilah and Inshaa Allah. It was like she asked Google how to pronounce them and recorded Google’s robotized voice saying these words. She also CANNOT pronounce Urdu words OMG. She didn’t even TRY. I couldn’t understand any of the Urdu words she said and I had to look up the dialogues with those words in my e-copy instead. You would think a professional narrator would attempt to pronounce these words properly and try to do them justice as best as possible. But it is so painfully obvious that she did not even try. At least my South Asian Muslim friends and I had a good laugh over my imitation of the narrator’s crappy pronunciation.
Romance Library 