Relationship drama set in Spain and what happens 20 years later
Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a lovely relationship drama set in Spain about an Iranian-American teenager's relationship with an older man and what happens 20 years later when she returns to the apartment she stayed in. The teenager, Arezu, moves to Spain to live with her father, but instead, he leaves her in the care/guardianship of Omar, an adult man who her father trusts. Arezu ends up spending a lot of time with him, and their relationship develops from there. The prose is beautiful and easy to read. I'm sure this will be a nice summer novel for many readers.
Here is a quote from Chapter 1 when Arezu is speaking about Omar:
"“You,” he said to me weeks later, said to me habitually then,
his head tilted back, his throat exposed, “are my lover.” He would
draw me in and kiss me hungrily. I didn’t always like it, perhaps
wasn’t even comfortable, but I let him. Maybe I even egged him
on. I don’t know. I’ll never know. I was in acute pain, lonely in
ways I was too young to grasp, and there was no one around to
ask me to articulate my suffering, to help me fix it in language,
so I raged on like a wounded animal who knows not what to do
except soothe her pain with more pain, lust after the final blow
of death that will put an end to it all. I became hooked on Omar.
He was like a drug, a humiliation I craved, and I kept going back
for more."
Overall, Savage Tongues reads like literary fiction that would also be a pleasant beach read for readers looking for a tale of romance set in Spain. For me, personally, I just couldn't get over the creepy age-gap in the relationship between Arezu and Omar, so that is why I took off 2 stars. This is also just not the type of book that I typically read. I don't usually enjoy literary fiction, realistic novels, historical fiction, relationship dramas, or romances. That's not the book's fault though. I'm just explaining why it wasn't a 5-star read for me. If you are intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of beach reads set in a foreign country, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in August!
Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a lovely relationship drama set in Spain about an Iranian-American teenager's relationship with an older man and what happens 20 years later when she returns to the apartment she stayed in. The teenager, Arezu, moves to Spain to live with her father, but instead, he leaves her in the care/guardianship of Omar, an adult man who her father trusts. Arezu ends up spending a lot of time with him, and their relationship develops from there. The prose is beautiful and easy to read. I'm sure this will be a nice summer novel for many readers.
Here is a quote from Chapter 1 when Arezu is speaking about Omar:
"“You,” he said to me weeks later, said to me habitually then,
his head tilted back, his throat exposed, “are my lover.” He would
draw me in and kiss me hungrily. I didn’t always like it, perhaps
wasn’t even comfortable, but I let him. Maybe I even egged him
on. I don’t know. I’ll never know. I was in acute pain, lonely in
ways I was too young to grasp, and there was no one around to
ask me to articulate my suffering, to help me fix it in language,
so I raged on like a wounded animal who knows not what to do
except soothe her pain with more pain, lust after the final blow
of death that will put an end to it all. I became hooked on Omar.
He was like a drug, a humiliation I craved, and I kept going back
for more."
Overall, Savage Tongues reads like literary fiction that would also be a pleasant beach read for readers looking for a tale of romance set in Spain. For me, personally, I just couldn't get over the creepy age-gap in the relationship between Arezu and Omar, so that is why I took off 2 stars. This is also just not the type of book that I typically read. I don't usually enjoy literary fiction, realistic novels, historical fiction, relationship dramas, or romances. That's not the book's fault though. I'm just explaining why it wasn't a 5-star read for me. If you are intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of beach reads set in a foreign country, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in August!