Follow Your Heart

by Tasha Nathan

Overview

Nisha has always been a good Tamil daughter. She tries to keep her grades up to meet her parents' high expectations to become a doctor. And of course she's not allowed to be in a romantic relationship while she's still a teenager.

But Nisha discovers what she really loves is writing. As she devotes more of her time and attention to her creative writing class, she also finds that who she really loves is her classmate Todd. Can love conquer obligation?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459412361
Publisher:	Lorimer
Publication date:	08/28/2017
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Tasha Nathan has a sociology degree and a diploma in counseling. She is a women's rights advocate and has worked alongside organizations to promote gender equality. She is a contributor to the online magazine TamilCulture. She lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

Lonely Emmy in Love Is Love finds her only solace in sugary cereal and chips. Overeating increases her insecurity and empowers her self-accusing inner voice. She tries to find acceptance by giving a boy a blowjob, but is only more miserable. When she falls in love with a transgender boy who cares for her just as she is, she learns to like herself. Same Love’s Adam is outed when a classmate sees him shopping with Mike. When Adam tells his parents that he is gay, they send him to a Christian camp for youth struggling with sexual issues. Once there, he is drawn to Paul, who returns his affection. When another roommate tries to commit suicide, Adam leaves the camp to live with Mike and his mother. Follow Your Heart explores Nisha’s conflicted love for her family and for her blond, handsome boyfriend Todd. Nisha’s South Asian parents expect her to become a doctor and marry a Sri Lankan boy. Nisha loves to write, however, and successfully has an article published. At first, her parents are outraged, but in the end, they allow her to take both writing and science courses in her first year of college. Only in Follow Your Heart do adult characters show growth. Although teen characters achieve some break-throughs, and even given that these are written as hi/lo novels, the concern is that the content may be insulting to the intelligence of reluctant/struggling readers. The situations are formulaic and the resolutions seem pat, with little hint of the huge problems that lie ahead for each main character; however because the themes are so very current, these volumes may well engage some reluctant readers. Real Love Reviewer: Marla Unruh; Ages 11 to 18.

VOYA, August 2017 (Vol. 40, No. 3) - Marla Unruh

2017-06-27
Shy high school senior Nisha, brown-skinned and dark-haired, tries to balance her parents' strict and traditional Sri Lankan Tamil expectations and values with the freedoms of the liberal Canadian society she is growing up in. Her parents are pushing her to become a doctor, but what Nisha really enjoys is writing, especially pouring out her frustrations in her anonymous blog, Confessions of a Sri Lankan Girl. When Nisha is assigned to work on a creative-writing project with a white boy named Todd, they both realize that they have been waiting to get to know each other better. Nisha knows that dating a boy outside her culture and heritage would be sacrilegious, a cause of much shame to her parents and much gossip in her extended community. Nisha and Todd's interracial, forbidden relationship should be exciting, but Nisha's narration is uninspired and fails to provide any tension or true drama. The representation of immigrant South Asian family and culture is realistic but does not rise above stereotype, and the abrupt resolution of her conservative parents' disapproval of both her relationship with a non-Tamil boy and her passion to write feels unrealistic and therefore cannot satisfy. Although this coming-of-age story deals with an interracial relationship and immigrant angst, limp writing, one-dimensional characters, and sweet but simplistic motivations sink it. (Fiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews

Nisha lives in Canada but is part of the Tamil culture, and her parents want to keep it that way. Nisha must to do what they say and marry a good Tamil boy. Her life is traditional and strict, and she does as any Tamil girl would: she accepts the decisions her culture makes for her. That is, until she meets Todd. Todd, the attractive boy in her Creative Writing class, who is not a Tamil. Nisha risks everything to be with him, and ends up questioning her entire value system. Nisha wants her freedom: freedom to make her own decisions. The young adult novel is current and its hi/low writing structure makes it a good fit for reluctant readers. Reviewer: Patricia K. Landy; Ages 12 up.

Children's Literature - Patricia K. Landy