The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Summary:
When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this rom com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses.
When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.
Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.
Review:
The Henna Wars follows Nishat after she comes out as a lesbian to her parents. This is really hard for her because her parents “accept” what she says to them, but she knows they really don’t and are hoping she’ll grow out of it. Along with this, her business class has started a project of creating their own business and whatever team wins will get a cash prize. Nishat, with her two best friends, work on an idea that Nishat is excited and passionate about, henna. Except there’s another group doing henna as their business and Nishat is upset about it because they are using something from her culture because they think it’s “cute”.
I really liked this story. It talked about so many good things like cultural appropriation, how hard it is to be queer when you don’t have supportive parents, and being queer while going to a Catholic school. Nishat has dealt with racist rumors and catty girls while growing up, she knows how to keep her head down and ignore people. But I really enjoyed it when she finally stopped doing that and stood up for herself.
Overall, I really liked Nishat. Her relationship with her sister was one of my favorite things about this book. Her sister is so supportive even when Priti was dealing with her own struggles. There were some good and bad moments with Nishat’s two best friends which definitely added to the story. And the romance with Flavia, despite all the bad things between them, was sweet and I grew to like it. This was a great story that talked about so many important things like, race and bullying. I think readers that like YA contemporary will really love this one.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.