I love a good forbidden romance trope story but this one that wasn’t for me. I’m not sure if it was the writing style or just the way the story was paced but I had a hard time finishing it.

i requested this off netgalley. i found both the cover/title/description interesting and it sounded like a cute fun quick contemporary romance read! this book follows aisha a 16 year old girl livin in uk she and her fam are muslims from pakistan, aisha wears her hijab even tho her parents dont want her to bc it may mean trouble and looks to her since there arent a lot of muslims in the area where they live. aisha is used to be invisible and bulied in school and has a bff isabelle who is popular. aisha is also a devout wearing hijab muslim but then she meets this new boy in school/town darren who starts to make her question things bc they start likin each other. hes sweet/kind and has a lot of muslim girl friends. isabelle starts to be interested in darren but he isnt interested in her. aisha doesnt tell her bff that darren is interested in her and vice versa. the romance was at first sight and it was fast. it was cute/adorable. kinda cringe at times xD when darren would call aisha babe lol thru out the book aisha is confused about her fait and if she should wear or not the hijab and if she should or no continue seein darren even tho hes white and her family and aunty wouldnt approve of him bc he isnt muslim. so aisha comes up with a 10 step list to convert darren to islam (which i was like oh oh not a good idea). i liked aisha ,sometimes she made not very smart decisions like that list but ig thats normal for a 16 year old girl in love. i liked darren too but sometimes he was a bit idk shady or mean sometimes i would think maybe he ends up by not bein a good guy or hurts her or somethin. im not sure if this book portraits islam/muslims/pakistan and religion the best way. im sure certain things in this book are different or at least it depends from people to people. overall it was a fast quick comtemporary romance read. the romance was also cute and funny at times. characters were sometimes relatable (specially aisha when shes in love)

Aisha is a Muslim girl that wears a hijab. She seems to want to follow her religion but falls in love with a white boy. Keeps this hidden from her parents though she does seem to have good relationship with family. Comes up with 10 steps to make the boy Muslim. Seems very short sighted to think HE needs to change. Love does not conquer all. He sees the list and it all backfires. Alisha is confused. Boy goes back to London and Aisha divests herself of everything leaving her in a quandary. Aisha puts herself out there as feminist Muslim.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Ten Steps to Us in exchange for an honest review.

While Ten Steps to Us gets okay once the MC starts going through actual character development, marketing it as YA was not a good idea. Aisha is very naïve which makes the plot and her plan very unrealistic. Were she a lot younger, it could have been seen as a good starting point for dynamic development but as is it makes her a very unlikable self-obsessed character. This is also written a lot more MG anyways so I wasn't the target demo and I do genuinely think the payoff was well done, I'm just not sure if many readers will want to get through everything that comes before it.

This book was not my cuppa tea; It's not that it wasn't good, but there was just TOO MUCH angst for me. Angst level "time to close this book, or skip some chapters, or just skip right to the end to make sure everybody is ok" was hit pretty early on, and that led me to skip around quite a bit. Which sometimes happens, especially with middle grade/YA books. It was a fine book, but it just wasn't for me. Did really appreciate reading about a different religion in YA, as opposed to seeing the same old Christian stuff replayed a million different ways, though.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thank you to Hashtag Press for providing me this arc via Netgalley!
This was honestly plain bad. I realize that the matters addressed in the book are important, but this is not the way to do it.
The story was so childish and didn't make sense, the way the culture was shown was terrible, and I don't even know what to say about the writing. I still have nightmares about the description of Aisha putting on a hijab (this is how the book starts).
Also, I hated the main character.

Unfortunately, this is a DNF for me. I really wanted to keep going and give this book a chance to see where the plot goes, but there are some things I couldn’t look past. Aisha is not a likable character. She immediately comes off as judgmental and while I understand it stems from her own insecurities, it was still far too negative to be at all enjoyable. Several characters in the first five chapters are described as being “fat”. We are also introduced to the main love interest very quickly without any context behind the immediate infatuation. The pacing of this book felt very rushed. We are shown details of Aisha's family life and life at school in a very erratic way without it feeling like a cohesive story. I was several chapters into the book and still felt confused about who Aisha is supposed to be and what her personality and voice is. The information on Pakistani culture felt to be included quickly without taking the time to flesh any of it out. Aisha’s inner dialogue felt like a non-Muslim’s explanation of Islam and Pakistani culture. It read more as a cliché to me than a portrayal of someone's reality. The plot of this book has a lot of promise, but the character development fell extremely short for me.