What a completely different, coming of age story about love, culture, relationships and family. Not what is normally read, but I couldn't put it down.

Two generations of women living according to their cultural, religion and family beliefs. Two different times and places. Hard decisions to be made and how they ripple across the outer family circle.

I think there is a demand right now for romance novels that offer more than a simple love story. Readers want to think about new ideas, challenge their own prejudices and come away from a novel with a sense of something having changed. I knew that The Mismatch would do exactly that and it was one of the richest experiences I’ve had with a romance novel for a while.

In 1970s Iran, Neda has married the handsome, eligible Hossein and the couple have moved to England for a better life but does the Western world really hold the answers they’re looking for? 40 years later, Soraya has just graduated from university with a good degree in English Literature but that elusive first job is nowhere in sight. She has also started seeing Magnus, an aspiring writer, but Soraya knows that it can’t ever become serious because her Muslim background means she’ll never be allowed to be with him.

The book gives us both Neda’s story and her youngest daughter Soraya’s story. Jafari expertly demonstrated the distinct similarities and differences between the two women’s experiences and I had great fun drawing the parallels. Neda is committed to gaining her Masters and then a PhD rather than a life at home like many Muslim women of her generation. Although possibly not intentional, it’s perhaps this shunning of expectations that influences Neda’s children to be the individual free-thinkers that they are.

Soraya’s chapters depict a slow questioning of the religious ideals that she has been raised with. Although she is curious about sex and alcohol, Soraya is still determined to not disappoint her parents. This conflict comes to a head after a horrendous dramatic event that caused me to throw the book across the room and causes Soraya to change tack completely.

The beginnings of Neda and Hossein’s relationship is so beautiful and it’s clearly a love match. Hossein is respectful, romantic and supportive of Neda’s dreams and watching this man slowly crumble was perhaps the most heartbreaking aspects of the book. I think Hossein’s story is an example of so many Muslim immigrants who come to the UK with the hopes of a better life but instead find that the grass really isn’t greener at all. I can’t excuse a lot of what Hossein’s behaviour over the course of the book but his fall is so dramatic and sad that it’s impossible not to shed a few tears when you realise it.

I loved how the book managed to weave in a little Iranian history too. Not long after Neda and Hossein move to England, things in Iran begin to change and it’s not in the direction that they hoped for. Being so far away from their families at this time is a real struggle for them but they know that they’re better off in England, away from the terrors of their home country. I can imagine the realisation that they’ll probably never return to Iran slowly dawning on Neda and Hossein and it’s truly heart-rending.

Soraya’s disappointment and disenchantment with post-uni life will resonate with anyone who has ever been a fresh graduate, particularly those with Arts degrees. Of course, she compares herself to her friends who have successfully found themselves on exciting graduate schemes and internships and wonders why she isn’t having the same luck. I still take every professional rejection personally and I’m not sure that will ever change, so I really related to her on this level. It’s really tough to build a career in a creative field, so rooting for her was a very easy thing to do.

Despite everything that they have in common and despite how much she likes him, as a white English boy, Magnus just isn’t a feasible option for Soraya. Although Soraya was born and raised in England and holds a lot of British values, she is haunted by the fact that eventually she must conform and marry a Muslim boy. It’s almost like this is the one value that she can’t bring herself to fight and so she does everything she can to stop herself falling in love with Magnus. I was constantly conflicted over wanting to encourage her to give in to her fledgling feelings and completely understanding her desire to not disappoint her family. It’s an impossible decision that I know so many young people all over the world have to make.

Soraya has the shadow of the story of her oldest sister Laleh hanging over her and I think this is a big driving factor in her determination to not get serious with Magnus. Laleh was disowned by the family as a teenager because she chose to be with her white British boyfriend. As a result, Soraya has grown up with no contact with her sister and the family act as if she never existed. Soraya is naturally terrified of the same thing happening to her.

The Mismatch is a moving, thought-provoking novel with a wonderfully satisfying ending. I was worried that things would end tragically but it ended on a happy note in more ways than one. Both Soraya and Neda deserved nothing but good things and I finished it with so much hope. It’s a coming-of-age story with fantastically memorable characters and true love in all its forms at its very heart.

DNFed at 31% - This book had many, many great qualities so I feel bad for putting it down. I will most likely return to it at some point however it did not grip me in which a love story normally does. I felt the “two people from different worlds meet and fall in love” trope has been done many times and I couldn’t feel any difference with this one and where’s its plot was going. I personally need some sense of mystery or something to keep me turning the pages - which this lacked.

I don't like to be negative about someone's writing. I know how hard it is to sit down a write a book. Tastes are subjective so I'll just say that this book wasn't for me. I enjoyed the premise and had high hopes that this would be a novel I'd immediately recommend. Unfortunately, I found the writing a little clumsy and struggled to enjoy it.

This seemed very unlike anything I’d read before, it felt original and refreshing. It’ll walk you through feelings that resonate so strongly even though you perhaps thought they were long forgotten. Beautiful book.

As a young British Iranian woman, I knew I had to read this book. I resonated with so much of it, from Iranian traditions, family dynamics, the perils of having family members on social media, and falling in love with people of different backgrounds to your own. The conservatism and strictness displayed in the family dynamics made me feel uncomfortable at first - I was worried it was painting Iranians in a negative light and it felt so different to my own upbringing. However, the second half of the book completely changed my mind. This is such an important story, and I am sure many people will relate to it and find comfort in it.

I have mixed feeling on this! Firstly, I did enjoy reading it and found it so powerful. As a white woman, obviously I can’t relate to Soraya in her and her families relationships and their religion, but because of this I found the story enlightening. Ignorantly, I didn’t realise that Muslim families followed some of these practices still and treated women this way (I realise some families maybe don’t but the Nazari family do).

I found Soraya an interesting lead character and I could truly feel how much she was struggling, with her career, her relationships, her family and her religion. I found how her father treated her and her mother so upsetting. The story switches by chapter to Soraya’s life in present day England, and her mother Neda’s life dating back to the 70’s before she and her husband moved to the UK from Iran.

I felt for Neda as the years went on and her husband became so different to the man she married and treated her so awfully. I didn’t love how in the end, Houssein seemed to kind of get away with the way he behaved and just blamed his actions on his addictions.

At first I liked the character of Magnus and his relationship with Soraya seemed genuine and sweet. When he came crawling back at the end of the book, I was disappointed that Soraya took him back after the things he had done. He read her diary and let his mates say disgusting, derogatory things about her, and told them he’d taken her virginity just to ‘get them off is back’. Soraya deserved so much better.

I would’ve liked to have known more about Laleh. Obviously we found out eventually the circumstances in which she was disowned by the family, but I would’ve maybe like the heard more about what happened to her after she left.

All in all, this was a good read, i found it powerful and moving.

Newly graduated Soraya struggles to balance her family’s expectations and her own, feeling unaccomplished in her young adult life. The idea that she hasn’t been kissed at twenty-one bothers her, so fixing that means everything else should work out. When she decides to make it a reality, Magnus Evans is the answer. Magnus is everything her Muslim parents would disapprove of in a man. Someone she could never see herself with, but this mismatch might be a perfect choice. The longer she gets to know Magnus, the less sure she becomes in her decision to pull away.

The Mismatch was a tricky book for me. Personally, I resonated a lot with Soraya; her trauma and emotions when it came to handling her culture and family felt almost similar to mine. This story is less about the romance, as suggested by the synopsis, and more about her coming to face her Muslim guilt while juggling her culture’s sexist ideas. I won’t lie; I felt like I saw red for much of the scenes because it felt a bit too real. Soraya’s brother is allowed to do whatever without any consequences, while Soraya and her sister quite literally have to fear for their lives to do even do a slither of what he’s able to do. Soraya’s father is abusive and terrible, and the story does a great show of exploring the nuances and how the effects of it resonate throughout the family.

Soraya’s story is not the only one told here. Chapters changed between Soraya and her mother, Neda, whose story pans from her university days in Tehran to her immigration journey to the UK. The real strength in this novel runs in the parallel between Soraya and Neda and their family. Neda is barely out of university, working towards her Masters when she decides to move to the UK with her husband, and they both struggle to adapt to their new life. Soraya’s guilt is rooted in the belief that she is disappointing her mother, who goes through absolute hell, from adapting to a new home to slowly losing her husband to drug addiction.

For a contemporary romance novel, the romance novel was the least of my interest in this story, which is rather strange. Magnus Evans is rather frustrating to the point where I had lost interest in rooting for them to be together. The miscommunication which drives them apart was rather unforgivable, in my opinion. (Spoilers: Soraya discovers that Magnus’s friends began to hold a bet to see how long it would take for him to sleep with Soraya. While Magnus is against the bet, he doesn’t really do much to curry favour because he lets his friends be terrible behind her back. And then dares to compare the bet to Soraya’s plan to make him her first kiss when he is aware of the trauma surrounding why Soraya is scared to be intimate. And not to mention, HE read her journal and then told other people what was in it.) I just wanted to grab Soraya by the shoulders and tell her this white man was NOT worth it.

In the end, The Mismatch wasn’t disappointing, and I enjoyed reading it a lot. However, I wasn’t exactly satisfied with some plot choices. Certain characters weren’t fleshed out enough, almost forgettable, and the romance is sorely disappointing. But the rest of the story that charts Soraya’s family and her desire for fulfilment was hopeful, and I can see this book resonating with other readers; it just missed the mark for me.

I enjoyed this on the whole. I actually preferred the exploration into the family than the main love story but I think this held together the telling of this take in a way that may have been thinner on the ground if it had solely focused on this plot line. An enjoyable read, but perhaps a bit fluffy in places.

I DNF'd at 15%. Nothing about the start of this novel was working for me, and I was getting the impression that the main character was being set up as a "not like other girls" sort of character. On top of that the writing wasn't great, with a couple of weird descriptions, and the dialogue felt very unnatural.

Maybe the story and writing improved further down the line, but I couldn't find the energy to continue with this. I'm sure other readers will absolutely love this book, I'm just not one of them.

What a wholesome love story.

It didn't feel like a coming of age story as advertised. It's just a really feel-good contemporary novel and yes, the characters are unforgettable.

I loved The Mismatch! It was just the kind of book I had been seeking out-- warming, enlightening and moving at once. Though there are certainly elements of sadness and more tragic components to the storyline, it mixed together a lot of my favourite aspects in a novel: romance, family histories and dynamics, lines of mystery, as well as a character's decisions during a significant moment in their lives. Although a lot of the novel focuses on Soraya's growing romance with Magnus (with frequent flashbacks to her mothers past), a significant aspect is also Soraya's own journey to finding herself. It is for this reason that Soraya's character development was most engaging to read and easy to connect with, and I thought the realistic writing of each character and their relatability is what I appreciated most. Though I believe the portrayal of Muslim men, in particular, could have been slightly more nuanced, I still think that in general, the author incorporated religious identity within the storyline really well. Despite not agreeing with every outlook, I liked how each character was given the space to form their relationship with religion on their own terms. It was also the first book I have read that centres on Iranian characters, so it was really refreshing to learn about the significant impacts of Iran's political background and different aspects of (British-) Iranian culture and lifestyle.

Die-hard fans of romcoms will likely find The Mismatch to be an entertaining or sweet read but alas within a few pages of starting this book I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. As I had really high hopes for this book I can't help but be disappointed by what I have read of it.

What immediately stood out was the writing...which struck me as kind of clumsy (remember: this is my opinion so chances are you will disagree). For instance, "a glimmer of a smile traced his lips"...shouldn't it be 'a glimmer of a smile in his eyes' or 'a hint of a smile traced his lips'?

The first on page interaction between our MC and her LI happens around the 7% mark. And, of course, our MC "couldn't help but notice now how broad his shoulder were under the graduation gown" and his nose which "bent ever so slightly to the left, and was crooked in a different way from hers. She imagined this quirk only made him more attractive to girls, gave a bit of an edge to his otherwise perfect physique".

Then we get this: "He was a popular rugby player, and she was a quiet nobody"

And this, to establish that our MC isn't as 'conventionally' beautiful as another female character (in this case her sister Parvin): Parvin, who is wearing a "figure-hugging dress", is "blessed with a flat stomach, big bottom and tiny waist".

I don't know...everything about the start of this novel is not working for me (remember: I am merely expressing my honest and entirely subjective opinion). This whole setup has a strong 'not like other girls' whiff which I find to be deeply irksome.
The prose needs some work, the conflict seemed contrived (such as that first scene featuring the LI), the dialogues are not so great, and we have a character who I fear will function as the Bitchy Gay Sidekick™ (the kind of representation I except from a late 2000s tv show).
I will stop now as I do not wish to be excessively mean/critical.

As I said above, I did not fish this book so chances are the writing improves down the road (I am just not patient enough to keep going).
I wish the author and her book the best. I'm sure that many readers—possibly those who are not grinches like moi—will be able to fall in love with The Mismatch.

Aw, I liked this story way, way more than I initially thought when I started reading. In the first pages, I had a little bump to conquer, but after I settled that one, I wanted to read on and on. The Mismatch is about a British-Iranian Muslim girl and her mom, and I think many women recognize their struggles, even when they’re not Muslim.



Soraya just graduated from university and is searching for a job. Coming from a very protective Muslim family, she spread her wings during her college days. Doing things she wasn’t allowed to like wearing short skirts, drinking, and taking recreational drugs. One thing she hasn’t done yet: kissing a boy. Then she meets Magnus, an atheist, an extrovert, and who slept with so many girls. Soraya likes him but only wants to use him for her first kiss. Gradually she finds out that there’s far more to him than the brash guy he seems to be. Meanwhile, she has to deal with her dysfunctional Iranian family, especially her Dad and Laleh, the sister banned from the family fifteen years ago.



The story is not only about Soraya but also about her mom Neda. I loved the flashbacks to Neda’s past. They gave an inside how she grew up in Iran, her struggles, and the way she brought up her children. I admired her strong will to achieve her goals while living in a more and more dysfunctional marriage.

This story shows how difficult it can be to grow up as a British-Iranian Muslim girl like Soraya. She tries to move between her parents' strict upbringing and the looser way of life she might want to live.
<i>She wanted a middle ground that didn’t exist, would never exist. She wanted to feel connected to God. But did that mean she had to be told how to dress? And who did her romantic relationships affect, other than herself?</i>

Having a white boyfriend doesn’t seem possible. Choosing Magnus means leaving her family (like Laleh did), and choosing her family means losing Magnus. And then her mom, who achieved so much in her life but stuck in her marriage simultaneously, the way she feels about men, trying to live according to the Islamic rules.


I really liked this debut. The writing is enthralling and kept me longing for more. Somehow I enjoyed reading about Neda’s past the most because she was so strong and had so much to conquer.



The only thing I questioned was the way Muslim men were portrayed. I can understand Sara Jafari’s point of view because it’s what we still see, men still dominating women (this is not only happening in Muslim families, though!). On the other hand, I know Muslim men who see women as their equal. In this story, Neda’s father fitted that last category the most.



Last I need to explain the little bump I had to get over. It’s the use of ‘whilst’ in the story instead of ‘while’. I know ‘whilst’ is more common in British English, but I’d edit it to ‘while’ if it's still possible. In a coming-of-age story like this, the use of ‘while’ just feels better. And it’s far more suitable for non-British readers because I think this is not only a story for the British market. It’s universal. I could see Soraya as a Dutch-Iranian girl of an American-Iranian girl as well.



I saw some typos while reading (pros and con(s), a double point at the end of a sentence etc. A last edit round might help (while you’re changing whilst in while 😂).

The Iranian immigrant experience is one I’m not familiar with, except for the work of the American YA author, Taherah Mafi, and Sara Jafari is an author I’ve seen on social media, so I was eagerly looking forward to reading her debut novel.
This is a dual narrative:
* set in 2014 this narrative follows 21-year old Soraya, is about to graduate with a literature degree from Goldsmiths. Soraya’s Iranian family is quite strict but when she came to university she started drinking, and doing drugs, unknown to her family. But she hasn’t had sex yet. So when she finds that the most popular young man on her course is into her, her friends urge her to pursue him and use him for practice. So she does! Only the two start to fall in love and have a relationship, even though he’s infamous for being a player. Things go well until Soraya is caught by her parents who see her in a tagged picture on Facebook with her boyfriend, and all hell breaks loose.
* We go back to 1970s Iran where we meet Soraya’s mum, who at this point is unwed and a teenager. In this timeline we follow Neda, and how she married her husband and moved to London. Neda is a practising Muslim and finds that her husband is not, and he’s addicted to drugs and alcohol. He’s not quite the picture perfect Muslim. He married her to appease his religious father. As the story moves forward in time we see what happened with her oldest daughter and why she was disowned by the family.
This is a tricky book to review. On the one side I was intrigued to read a book about an experience not mine. I enjoyed Neda’s narrative the most as it painted a picture of what Iran was like in the 1970s and how challenging the immigration experience was for Neda and the racial abuse she faced. On the other I abhorred Soraya’s narrative which uses all the teen movies plot-lines with a cliched love interest and a predictable arc. I was not interested in this storyline at all and was more intrigued by Laleh, the abandoned oldest daughter. Furthermore I’m not sure how I feel about the problematic ending: Neda, the religious mother makes peace with her daughters dating white men, from different religions, because her own husband was an abusive and a nasty man, and unlike her perceptions that white men aren’t monogamous and discard women she realises that her daughters’ partners are decent people. Because her husband was worse than her daughters’ partners it’s okay. I felt like the novel paints Muslim men in a problematic way, and there’s a bit of white saviour complex going on here. A somewhat disappointing read that missed the mark.