This Way Out is a story of self-acceptance, cultural differences and love both romantic and familial, and most importantly growth.

Our main character is Amar, an English-Bangladesh gay man who we meet just after he's become engaged to his upper-middle-class boyfriend Joshua. Amar's way of handling pretty much everything in his life made me initially think he was barely out of his teens but this isn't the case - he just reminds me of an emu.I'm not going to make any bones about it, Amar made me want to scream. From telling his family about his sexuality and engagement via WhatsApp to his way of blaming Joshua for not understanding him or saying coming out is easier if you're white. (I'd like to introduce him to my family and perhaps he'd see it's often far from easy. They're awful.)

So yes.. he's a pain and Joshua should have sometimes (often) pointed out the hypocrisy we see from Amar from early on. But Joshua too has his flaws, the main one being he lets those around him walk over him.

You may be wondering at this point, did I like This Way Out? The answer is yes - but not because of Amar and Joshua. Rather, because there's somewhat of a realism to the story, HEAs need to be worked on, with communication, acceptance and being faced with truth and consequence. That human emotion can get too much and we all need help... 

As I said, this is a story of so much more than two men in love. It's about growth first and foremost.Amar needs a reality check, and perhaps to have developed a backbone before now. The sad reality is, being LGBTQ regardless of ethnicity, religion etcetera is often very hard. Society has gone backwards and I would have hoped he'd realise that but Amar is sheltered or rather willingly isolated from the community. I think that this book is good in showing some of the harrowing examples of being a gay Muslim man. The way Amar is regarded as being mentally unstable, or deliberately cruel to his siblings and widower father is a hard read but sometimes these things are also necessary even in fiction. There's going to be someone who will unfortunately relate to being told one cannot be gay and Muslim tonight and that saddens me. Perhaps books like this can help them not feel so alone. I hope so.

Moving aside from Amar, I loved Elijah whose bookshop our MC works at. His tale of the eighties as a gay man, had me crying and I wanted more of this caring man who had done all he could to honour his late partner's love of books. This man needed more page time - the small moments show a wonderful character, with an all too realistic history and his care for Amar and guidance is one Amar needed to appreciate more. This was a man who had lived through an entire nation despising his existence, he would have been somewhat relatable to Amar surely? It's this friendship I think more than anything pushes Amar into being a better person and I'd have liked more insight into their bond.

To me, it's the background characters that give this story connections it does. I wanted more about them, it doesn't help that there's somewhat of a fast-forward as we go through the book so we no doubt miss out on a lot but I think more time spent on Amar's self-discovery with new friends, or perhaps a little more from Joshua's point of view would have added so much more to the book.

I'm glad I read this, it made me go through a plethora of emotions and came away from it so glad to see how far Amar comes, even if he still did infuriate me quite a bit and Joshua was still a now slightly damp blanket.