"Elizabeth Eslami’s debut novel is a culture clash from the get-go, but it’s a beautifully written clash filled with the most familiar kinds of yearning, both familial and cultural. Jasmine is the prickly college dropout daughter of an Iranian father and an American mother. She is uncertain about what she wants, or if indeed she wants anything at all, but her father has plans for her new path—a hastegar, or an arranged marriage. Jasmine is horrified, and as father and daughter begin their wary but determined dance around each other, she wonders exactly who her father is, where his strange ways came from, how it is that people ever come together in the first place. Cultural confusion becomes less of an issue than the desperate need for connection, and the earnest ways in which Jasmine and her parents go about trying to simply see each other are equal parts heartbreak and revelation." – Kimberly Snow, The Inkslinger