People Change

Thank you Random House UK, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The story follows Shirin and Kian, who bump with each other in a party in London, after 10 years without any contact.
Shirin and Kian are both Iranians and were close friends in their last year of school, until something happened that caused their separation. Both characters have complex stories and struggled not only with mental health, as well as with their integration is society, being worth to mention that this haven't affected their ability to work and reach their professional and personal growth.

What I liked about the book:
- Extensive examples of racism in our society
- Diversity representation
- Mental health representation
- Beautiful second chance love story between two strong characters who not only complement each other but bring out the best of themselves.

What I think it could have been done better:
- Mental health is a serious topic that should be threaded carefully. Some people might need to be on medication, and this is ok and should be normalized. However, the decision to stop the medication should be discussed with the doctors and not made in an impulse “if I hit the basket, I stop taking my meds”. This is a dangerous behaviour that should not be incentivized.
- I was not fan of the writing style as everything was portrayed and excessively explained by the narrator to the point it made me feel I wasn't allowed to use my brain to interpret character actions by myself. The story imposes Shirin's opinions and I've felt that, if I eventually disagreed with them, I was just being racist.
- The book is called “People Change” but Shirin doesn't appear to believe anyone can change, any bad thing they've done in the past will be stuck with them forever. I'm not saying she wasn't an abuse victim of racists kids, but my understanding was that they bullied other people as well... We know that one of them went to prison and other was a well-known racist, but Shirin exploded with Tom, with absolutely no knowledge of the person he was at the time. He might still be a racist, but he might as well have been a civilized adult who have grown from being a stupid kid.

Overall, this was a very nice story including a lot of serious and important issues in our society.

3.5 stars rounded up.