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thesffcorner · 5 years

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Tell Me How You Really Feel

Tell Me How You Really Feel is a YA romance written by Aminah Mae Safi. It follows Sana and Rachel, seniors in high school, who are sworn enemies. Rachel is an aspiring filmmaker, struggling to finish her senior project which may seal or destroy her scholarship to NYU, and Sana is a future med student, who is struggling with the possibility that she may not want to be a doctor after all. Due to a series of unfortunate events, the two are forced to work together on Rachel’s film, and their relationship might change, taking their futures along with it. I loved this book. I knew I would love it from the moment I started reading; by the time we got to Rachel’s PoV I was already sold. This was one of the easiest 5 stars I’ve given out all year, and I absolutely adored this book. It’s very cute and funny, but it also tackle a lot of really important subjects like tradition, family, feminism, the male gaze and the struggle that queer girls have with relationships. If you are at all interested in the synopsis, pick this up now; you will not regret it. Before I gush about this book for 12 paragraphs straight, I do have to get my one gripe out of the way. This whole book revolves around Rachel’s film which is a modern retelling of the Odyssey. Except it isn’t; it’s the Iliad. They talk about the Trojan War, Helen of Troy is one of the main characters, the OG narrator is supposed to be Cassandra and Odysseus or Penelope are not mentioned once. I don’t understand how this happened; I refuse to believe Safi doesn’t know that the Iliad covers the Trojan War? Everytime the Odyssey was mentioned I wanted to scream, it bugged me that much. That admittedly petty gripe aside, I really loved this book. One of the first things that caught my eye that I loved were the chapter titles: each one is a reference to a different film or music video, but they are a lot more subtle than the usual. The one that made me cackle was You Take Me By the Heart when You Take Me By the Hand, but I also appreciated There Goes Your Social Life and Chew Like You Have a Secret. This whole book is one big love letter to film making and film in general; there is so much stuff in this book about editing, shooting, and even the more technical aspects of film like gaffing, which as someone who was pretty often the gaffer on student shoots, I was super down for. Every single conversation about the industry just punched me in the stomach in the best way possible; I loved that Rachel was such a crass and bold filmmaker, who treated set like male filmmakers do, and all the discussions of women in film, and how underrepresented and how many difficulties they have making it. None of the conversations felt like I was being preached too, and having seen first hand how differently men and women are treated on set, I was nodding along angrily to everything I read. It’s not all bad stuff though; there are scenes where Rachel and Sana discuss why they love film so much, and everything that the medium can deliver in terms of emotions. I was just so happy reading this book, because it was such a clear love-letter to film-making, while still keeping it generally realistic to a teenager. Rachel has a rater conventional taste; Sana even calls her out on how all the ‘classics’ she wants Sana to see are white and Hollywood. The other big love of this book is cheer-leading. I feel like for whatever reason, I have been just bombarded with cheer-leading recently; I re-watched Bring it On, I watched a video on Bring it On, I re-watched Fired Up, and then this book. Sana is a cheerleader and she’s also the captain of the team. I really enjoyed that she loved cheer as a sport, rather than as a social activity (I also cackled at the jab about how Chess players are considered athletes, but cheer is an ‘athletic activity’, barf). Though we don’t get a lot of routines and actual practices, what we do get was fun, and I really enjoyed Sana’s little speech towards the end. Also the fact that her favorite film is But I’m a Cheerleader, also made me happy. A major focus of the book is family. Both Sana and Rachel come from single parent households, though they get there through different circumstances. Rachel has a lot of resentment and anger towards her mother for leaving her, and learning about the circumstances was heartbreaking. Even though the book never fully acknowledges it, it’s pretty clear why Rachel hates beautiful girls and Helen of Troy specifically, once you learn that, and this section really left me heartbroken. On the flip-side, Sana has some major issues with both her father and grandparents. This was the part that I wasn’t a super big fan of, mostly because it’s both very different from how I was raised, and eerily similar to how families are here. The focus on appearances, and tradition, while sometimes sacrificing healthy and fulfilling relationships with children and elders really is a subject I dislike reading about. I did find it refreshing that Sana is out to her family and for the most part they are very accepting; her struggles are mostly to do with her desire to both please everyone and be the perfect daughter, while also trying to find her own path, and do things that aren’t necessarily in line with what her family expects from her. Speaking of being out, I really liked the discussion on queerness too. There is a passage where Rachel discussed how Sana has been placed in a cage all her life, not because she is afraid to flirt or to be out, but because other people just refuse to believe or acknowledge that someone like her could be gay. The whole ‘does everything in the book that is overt flirting, and yet gets treated as just being friendly’ really hit me hard, because I have experienced the same. It’s really difficult to convince others sometimes that you are in fact interested in women, and even more so to actually toe the line between flirting and coming on too strong. There is also discussion of class in this book, which I found interesting. Both Sana and Rachel have preconceived notions about the social background of the other, which are both wrong. It reminded me a bit of Pride and Prejudice, in that they are both so proud and stubborn and their mixed messages come from these ingrained fears tied to their class and family. The plot of the book was fine; I liked how melodramatic it was at points, especially the ending, but it firmly places itself in the teen rom-com genre and uses all the tropes in the best way possible. Even the falling out between the two girls felt really justified and I was glad that it was Rachel who had the most growing to do to be able to really connect with Sana. Speaking of, the characters were likewise great. I liked both families, though I was more attached to Sana’s mother who was a really cool woman, someone that I would like to be one day if I stay in the film industry. She was smart, and hardworking, and I loved that even when Sana and Rachel were at outs, she still reached out to help Rachel connect with other female industry professionals. Rachel was the character I related to more, and as such she annoyed me more. She is super aggressive a lot of the time, and doesn’t realize that because she’s always so defensive and has trained both herself and everyone else that she never needs help, that's why people never offer it. She had the more severe character arc, and I really enjoyed her examining her own biases and internalized sexism; I don’t read many books who do that. Sana I absolutely loved. She was a great character, just a super-well fleshed out teenager. I related to her struggles with asking girls out, her crush on Rachel, her viewing Helen of Troy as a person rather than a stereotype. I don’t even know how to describe her without just listing all the things about her that I loved which would be everything; she was truly a gem of a character, and definitely my favorite character I’ve read so far this year. Overall, read this book. It’s cute, it’s deep, it deals with film and feminism, and has one of the best female-female romances I’ve ever read. I 100% recommend it; I think it should get as much love as Red White and Royal Blue.

goodreads

#tell me how you really feel #tell me how you really feel review #moni talks #book review

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