The fears and friendships of Amaya Bhatt
An insightful, resilient, own-voices depiction of mental health.
What We Deserve is a sweet, honest and uplifting contemporary from Fijian-Guyanese author Alyssa Nohar, with excellent mental health rep, queer POC characters and an adorkable friendship group. It speaks specifically on anxiety and depression, and I liked how it spotlights the path to recovery. There were plenty of moments that I personally found very helpful — so much of what Amaya experiences was profoundly relatable.
I adored the friendship group in this, and was reminded of my own friends and the way we tease each other. Through the advice Amaya gives her new friends, Nohar perfectly illustrates how sometimes we can more easily give out truth and comfort to other people than hear it ourselves.
“I think what’s sad is spending your whole life worrying about being forgotten only to realize that you didn’t even get the chance to make an impact because you couldn’t get over the concept of your own mortality.”
Amaya’s arc was paralleled by a really interesting meta-narrative concept, where Amaya is herself reading a novel about a character battling with overwhelming shyness. A nice touch that served as occasional landmarks of where Amaya’s current stage of development was at.
This novel is so casually diverse, but sometimes I wanted to see more of the secondary characters’ cultures shine through in their chapters and interactions with Amaya. Although the way Amaya’s bisexuality was revealed felt a little out-of-character, I loved the way one of the characters’ a-romantic orientation is introduced; it came at the perfect moment in the story!
The last chapter was especially nice to read, framed as it is around love both platonic and romantic. I almost didn’t want the chapter to finish (though it admittedly ended a little abruptly), but as this book aptly says:
“[T]he story isn’t over just because we can’t read any more of it…Maybe there’s a paved walkway or a lit-up gazebo just out of frame that we don’t know about. Does that mean that it doesn’t exist?”
Full of lovable characters and an inspiring storyline centred around hope, resilience and growth, What We Deserve comes highly recommended from me!
Spotlighting Asian and Pacific Islander authors to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
