Top 10 Tuesday – Book Quotes Make My Heart Burst

A Top 10 Tuesday post for you all today! I couldn’t resist this prompt as I love sharing my favourite quotes! I’m going to be sharing my favourite quotes that make me swoon and my heart burst from all the emotions from my favourite ships.

I wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times. But if all we get is this one, and I share it with you, then I will never want for anything. – A Sky Beyond the Storm

“May I confess something?” Ali gazed at her in open sorrow. “I never really wanted to be out of your debt” – The Empire of Gold

I cannot promise never to die, habibti. But before death, there is life. No matter how short our hours are or how swiftly time flees, there is life. And since there is life, habibti, let us live. Let us not squander even one second of it. – The Candle and the Flame

Love is looking at someone as if the stars shine in their eyes – The Beautiful

She believed in such a world, where everyone got a turn, a season in the sun. – Love From A to Z

Habibi. Hayati. Roohi.
My love, my life, my soul, the words meant, but their meanings went deeper than that.
Habibi was for friends and love that was real enough.
Hayati was when love became an all-encompassing thing. Deeper and deeper, until one became the others life.
Roohi was when a soul twined with its match and loved with the force of a thousand suns. When it slipped beneath the heart and tangled in the very fibres of an existence. – We Free the Stars

“Do you not listen to me when I speak?” he answered shakily, his lip quirking up. “I love you. I have always loved you.” – These Violent Delights

I knew my heart was claimed by you. – Ayesha at Last

For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you. – The Wrath and the Dawn

I would have come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting. – Crooked Kingdom

So here are my favourite quotes that make my heart burst and leave me a wreck. Do share yours!

Top 10 Tuesday – My Favourite Ships

So as this week’s topic is a love freebie I thought I would share my favourite bookish couples! You can find all the prompts for top ten Tuesday here

So here are my favourite bookish couples!

Ali & Nahri from The City of Brass – Look it’s no secret how much I absolutely adore these two. The way they slowly became friends and found solace in each other. The way they accepted each other completely. I just love them!

Adam & Zayneb from Love From A to Z – They are such an adorable couple and I just love how much they care for each other and want the best for each other and how they made sure to keep their relationship halal and put Allah first. Just…I love them.

Khalid and Shahrzad from The Wrath and the Dawn – The enemies to lovers trope was used so effectively that despite Shazi wanting to kill him I was rooting for them the whole way. Also Khalid has some swoon worthy lines in this duology which made me melt.

Kaz and Inej from Six of Crows – I love them so much. But I love how they know that the timing isn’t right for them together so they also don’t hold each other back.

Nasir and Zafira from We Hunt the Flame – I died reading We Free the Stars because of these two and I just needed them to be okay end up together. The deep love they have for each other where they see the parts of each other no one else sees. Amazing.

Haidee & Arjun from The Never Tilting World – They went from reluctant allies to friends to lovers and I was so here for it! I also loved seeing their relationship from others perspectives because you could see how smitten they were.

Percy and Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series – The fact that they took 5 years to even realise they liked each other was amazing. Everyone else could see it except them and then we end with the underwater kiss. Perfection.

Laia & Elias from An Ember in the Ashes – The deep and tender way they care for each other and how they are a strength for each other. I just loved seeing their relationship develop even when it was painful.

Roma & Juliette from These Violent Delights – The tension and the angst killed me and then that ending. I am terrified because I don’t know how they can have a happy ending despite all they been through and I just want them to be happy together.

Ayesha & Khalid from Ayesha at Last – The way these two have the worst first impressions of each other and yet they slowly realise there is more than the first impression and yet they let others get in between them but then there is a happy ending where they start over and clear the air.

So these are my favourite couples. Let me know who your favourite couples are!

My Favourite Books of 2020

This year has been crazy in so many ways but one thing that I have loved is all the incredible books that have been published this year that making this list was so difficult. But here are my favourite reads of 2020, not including rereads.

1 The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty – Is this a surprise to anyone? I absolutely loved everything about this book especially Nahri and Ali’s journey. You can read my full review here

2 These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong – I loved this book so much. I completely fell in love with Juliette and the story was so interesting. My full review is here.

3 The Damned by Renee Ahdieh – I love everything that Renee writes and this was amazing! My full review is here

4 A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown – I will protect Malik with my life. My full review is here.

5 We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal – This book was incredible and painful and wonderful and I loved every second of it.

6 The Bloodprint by Ausma Zehanat Khan – This book is so wonderful and fed my soul. My full review is here

7 A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir – I am deceased. That is all.

8 The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafa – This book was heart breaking in so many ways and heart warming in so many ways. My full review is here

9 Prime Deceptions By Valerie Valdes – I loved the sequel even more that Chilling Effect and I cannot wait for the next book! My full review is here

10 Legendborn by Tracy Deonn – This book was such a surprising read. I completely fell in love. My full review is here.

So these are my favourite books of 2020! Do share your favourite books with me!

My Favourite Quotes from The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh

I absolutely adore every single book Renee has written and one of the things I especially love is her beautiful vivid writing. The way she immerses you into the world she has created. I never want to leave. Just reading some of my favourite quotes from The Beautiful to write this post had me wanting to go reread the whole book and all the emotions I felt reading came rushing back. I really need you all to go read her books because they are incredible and we are sleeping on these amazing books.

PS. If you want to know more about The Beautiful you can read my review

So anyways back to why I wrote this post, the amazing quotes that were in this book! Honestly I was tabbing away as I was reading but I only chose some of my favourites to share here because well, you need to go read the book to find out the rest.

She was no lamb. She was a lion.

I’m a girl who would rather experience life than watch it pass by from my window.

I imagine it would be freeing to care only about oneself. Alas I am not a man.

Sometimes a girl must make her own magic.

Then know this: the truth is not always what you see.

For if we do not understand fear, how are we to cherish safety?

Though I’ll admit I’ve never fancied the top hat. Men have no need of the extra height; they lord over everything enough as it is.

The mind is a sword. Knowledge is its whetstone.

The men enjoy keeping us in cages at every waking hour. That way we’re contained. They’re afraid of what would happen if we’re free.

No it wasn’t just her pride. She was simply tired of being told what to do.

Knowing who you are is necessary in order to determine who you want to be.

Rage is a moment. Regret is forever.

Love is looking at someone as if the stars shine in their eyes

Hope was its own kind of magic.

So these are some of my favourite quotes! Have you read any of Renee’s books? Do you have a favourite quote?

My All Time Favourite Characters

I know we all have lots of characters that we love but do you have characters that you love above all others? I have a few characters that I love that much. And I wanted to share them with you because you should all go read the books they’re in so you can also meet them!

 

Alizayd al- Qahtani from The City of Brass

Art by: Jocelyn Chatman

Of course, to no one’s surprise, I absolute love Alizayd al-Qahtani. He is the love of my life; I would die for him. He is the character that I have been wanting to read in books for so long. A character that is unapologetically Muslim and practices his faith openly. He also has a really wonderful character arc in the trilogy from being a naïve teenager to becoming the man who does whatever is required to save his people and his home. He makes mistakes but he learns and grows. His core beliefs which come from his faith, include justice for all is one of the main things that drives him to fight for those that are oppressed. I have actually written a whole blog post about why he means so much to me, you can read it here

 

Samirah al-Abbas from the Magnus Chase trilogy

Art by: Viria

She is a badass Valkyrie who wears a hijab and unapologetically practices her faith. When I first read Magnus Chase I literally screamed with joy! I loved how much Rick Riordan researched into Islamic beliefs and showed it so accurately and so respectfully. I loved how he helped show misconceptions about Muslim women through her but that she was such a well rounded character. She had goals and ambitions in life and she has such a cute relationship with her fiancé who fully supports her being a Valkarie. I just loved seeing her fast and pray and she was such a badass in battle. I loved her friendship with Magnus and that he was so respectful of her faith and how much they support and help each other.

 

Zainab from Love From A to Z

Art by: Kahanee Djinn

Zainab is someone I related to so much. She has so much anger inside her because of the injustice and Islamophobic people she has to deal with especially as that person is in a position of authority. I was so happy to see an angry young Muslim woman in a book because we do feel like this but we’re always supposed to be happy and calm and nice. Zainab was me, she expressed everything I felt, things I could never express, especially when I was younger. I also absolutely loved seeing how she navigates her feelings for Adam while keeping things halal and seeing that in a book made my heart fill with joy because I was told too often that I was a bad Muslim for wanting to marry my now husband because we had met at university, so clearly we didn’t keep it halal. If I had this book back then, I can’t imagine how much it would have helped me. Zainab will always hold a special place in my heart.

 

So theses are my top 3 favourite characters, as you can tell they all have the fact that they are unapologetically Muslim in common. Until I had read these book I honestly had no idea just how much I truly needed to see characters who looked like and had the same beliefs as me. My heart feels like it will explode with love not only for these characters but that they could be written and published so that so many young Muslim’s will see them at a time when they are trying to figure out who they are and they can see that they don’t need to downplay their faith or hide it to fit in.