REVIEW: The Best Laid Plans by Lauren Gallagher
It’s a foolproof strategy…until the emotional balance shifts.
After yet another adoption falls through, Gabe is ready to give up, and Shahid isn’t far behind him. Apparently, being a gay couple—half of which is Muslim—is just one strike too many for the powers that be.
When their friend Kendra offers to carry their baby for them, both men balk at first, but gradually warm to the idea. Especially Gabe, whose bisexuality is open to the chemistry among the three of them.
The plan seems simple. Kendra and Gabe, foregoing the cold, impersonal IVF clinic, paperwork and red tape, will conceive the old-fashioned way. They’ll all share parenting responsibilities, and live happily baby after.
But as the heat flares between Gabe and Kendra, Shahid’s long-suppressed insecurities bubble to the surface. Then some unexpected news catches the trio off guard and derails their plans—and now one heart could be left out in the cold.
Dear Lauren Gallagher,
First off, I should say I really enjoyed the book. Even though some things felt implausible to me and stretched my credulity beyond breaking point, at all times, I still enjoyed it. I liked the way you subverted some of the common tropes in books dealing with these topics and the sex between all three of the protagonists (yes, I said all three*) was super hot.
Nevertheless, even as I was devouring the book, at various points, I was asking myself how likely this set-up would be in real life, questioning myself on how much responsibility (if any) a fictional story has to be true to real life people, particularly marginalised people, and thinking that if maybe there were fewer elements thrown in, maybe I’d have been more able to accept the story.
If an author writes about our contemporary world as she would like it to be, rather than how it is (I don’t know that you did, I’m just speculating, possibly wildly), is that okay? What if that erases the lived experience of actual people? Does it make a difference that the author is white? (Would it be more acceptable, for example, if the author was a member of the non-WASP community, in this case a Muslim?) I asked a lot of questions in a part of my brain as I was reading and thinking about the book after I finished. I’m not sure I have any answers. I think, for the purposes of this review I don’t have to know them. I’m just going to lay some of those questions out and readers can make up their own minds and decide whether they might enjoy the book.
(I should also probably add a blanket apology here for any unintended insensitivity or ignorance I may display here. Please feel free to educate me in the comments. It is not my intention to be offensive or exclusive.)
I don’t know how common it is for gay Muslim men to be accepted by their family and their mosque. While my knowledge about Islam is pretty limited, it seems to me that homosexuality is not widely accepted in Islam or contemporary Muslim culture. I know it’s a crime in Saudi Arabia (though Saudi Arabia is not known for it’s progressive views on anything of course). I know there are Christian churches in the USA (where the book is set) that welcome queer people into their community and celebrate same sex marriage. I know there are also a lot of Christian churches in the USA which do not. I don’t know if it’s the same kind of thing for Muslims. I’m not sure if an imam in a USA mosque is likely to perform a marriage ceremony between two men, particularly when one of the grooms is not also Muslim.
I don’t know how common it is that a devout Muslim man would be married to a Catholic man and how they could make that marriage work as successfully as Gabe and Shahid clearly do. I know mixed religion marriage happens (see here for example) but is it commonplace? I’m not sure.
The story goes that Shahid and Gabe met in a Comparative Religions course at college. Shahid was the only Muslim man in the class and Gabe approached him and asked him for a coffee so he could ask questions about Islam. I’m sure that happens in real life, but in terms of a trope in a romance novel, it can be problematic from the point of view that no one person can speak to an entire religion and it could be seen that here, Shahid was cast in that role. That wasn’t my impression as I read the book however, but I mention it because I know I miss things sometimes and perhaps other readers will feel differently.
Because Islam brought Shahid and Gabe together, both Shahid’s family and his imam, over time, accepted their relationship as “meant to be”. Throughout the book in fact, where there was a dynamic of a family being not accepting of them, it was Gabe’s Catholic family who was the problem. Every time an issue came up which was or could be a stumbling block to Shahid’s family, they ended up accepting it, with relatively little angst so far as I can tell, as the will of Allah.
Shahid is devout. Gabe made him a prayer room in their house and he does his salat (prayers) there. He went, the year before, on the hajj to Mecca with his grandfather. He keeps Ramadan. More than that, he thinks and acts in terms of his faith all the time. His faith is stronger than Gabe’s. Gabe goes to Mass at Christmas and Easter and he gives up something for Lent (I’ll be honest, I know only slightly more about Catholicism than Islam. I had thought that participating in Lent was a sign of a more deep religious affiliation but Gabe doesn’t think of his faith in anywhere near the same terms as Shahid. It is essential for Shahid. My impression was that it was more cultural for Gabe – and this may be part of the reason that Gabe and Shahid can make their interfaith marriage work as well as they do). When an imminent adoption breaks down because the birth mother is uncomfortable with Shahid’s religion, he is able to cope better and more quickly because of his faith. Gabe is kind of out there on his own (in religious terms only; he and Shahid are very close.)
Part of me read the book with curiosity, observing with a kind of fascination how this couple from diverse religious backgrounds made a marriage work. I think it’s hard to do and they do it well. They had been married for nine years by the start of the book and their relationship is very stable. They had worked out what marriage looked like for them and that included navigating their religious differences. Both treated the other’s religion with respect and I’m sure that helped.
For what it’s worth (as I am, and I’m likely to demonstrate here, clearly not an expert), I think you were respectful of Shahid’s faith and religious observance. It was not fetishised and certainly not demonised. It just was. My impression was that you had some personal experience with Islam or that you had done some good research. That said, I’m still a little dubious that Shahid’s family and his imam would have been so accepting. I guess that still seems perhaps plausible but very unlikely to me. (I’d be very happy to be wrong on that by the way.)
And then there’s Kendra. She is a teacher at the same high school where Gabe works, also as a teacher. They are good friends and he and Shahid had helped Kendra through her divorce from a cheating POS a few years before. Kendra is heartbroken for her friends that they have again been turned down by a birth mother for adoption. Both Shahid and Gabe desperately want to be parents. In her mid 30s, Kendra is ambivalent about motherhood for herself, but after giving the matter some thought, she offers to carry a baby for her friends. The plan would be that Gabe and Shahid would be the legal parents of the child but there would be some kind of visitation/access agreement worked out so that Kendra could stay in the child’s life. It is not really intended that Kendra would be a co-parent.
Both Gabe and Shahid know that their families would frown at IVF. For themselves, they are reluctant to ask a woman to go through the rigors and traumas of IVF. Add to that, it’s expensive. Given how progressive Shahid’s family apparently were, I was a bit surprised at their reported concerns about IVF to be honest. Why was this their line in the sand? That wasn’t clear to me. It happens that I know plenty of people who have been through the IVF process (I am one of them) and frankly, I bought Gabe’s and Shahid’s reservations more than what they thought their parents’ reservations would be. Even so, that didn’t automatically mean that Kendra had to be physically intimate with one or both of the guys. There are other options short of IVF which are far less expensive and invasive. But the story was about the complications which arise when physical intimacy with Kendra is added into the mix, so of course that’s where it had to go.
Kendra is attracted to both men and Gabe has always thought Kendra was hot. Gabe is bi but has been happily faithful to Shahid for the 11 years of their relationship. Shahid identifies as gay but it turns out he has a little bi in him – but only a little. And actually, this was kind of lovely. I liked the exploration of the sexual identities of both men and I loved the dynamic between the three. Plus, the sex, all of it, was scorching hot, creative and well written.
I did spend a couple of nervous moments at one point in the book, dreading a thing I detest and which would have made the book a wallbanger, notwithstanding the enjoyment which had gone before. I was so pleased you didn’t go there.
There are other things I could talk about but I think they verge too far into spoiler territory for me to go into.
I liked the ending and was happy with it. However, my credulity was again stretched by the apparent (relatively) easy acceptance of it by the families. My concern with the story is that there are just so many things that Shahid’s and Gabe’s families (and Kendra’s come to think of it) have to accept. It’s not one thing, it’s not even two. It’s loads of things and each thing is hard. Taken individually, one might be plausible but by adding them together, the plausibility factor decreased exponentially. Because I am contrary, I can also say that even so, I appreciated the effort at inclusion you made.
I said above that I thought you were respectful of Islam within the confines of the book but I wonder if there aren’t some (perhaps even many?) actual Muslims who would take a different view? It’s not my bailiwick so I can’t really answer but it may be that notwithstanding the technical accuracy of things such as the salat and the fountain for wudu (ceremonial washing before salat), portraying an imam as being as progressive as Shahid’s is, could be seen as disrespectful.
I give you credit for not telling a story only about white people with Christian or no religious faith. It can sometimes be difficult to fit things into the confines of the genre romance where a HEA is king. Whether other readers will think that Shahid, Gabe and Kendra are shoe-horned into their HEA by a more fantastical view of real life, I cannot say. Whether, if that is what other readers think, they will be prepared to accept it, is another question.
For myself, I did feel that the characters and story were manipulated to get a HEA and I found it unlikely that such would occur in real life. One thing maybe, but not all the things. I hope it’s not racist/phobic to express that. I did a little research (not a lot, I admit) and what I can find indicates that all of these things being accepted and working out well seems pretty unlikely in real life. But perhaps I am selling Islam (and Catholicism for that matter) short. That said, I am a romance reader first and foremost and I am (in certain circumstances at least), prepared to accept the occasional sacrifice of authenticity for the end result of HEA.
I feel like I learned things in the book; about Islam and about navigating an interfaith marriage so I was clearly prepared to accept it as portraying a certain level of authenticity. I think you were respectful in so far as genre confines allowed. I credit you with more than merely good intentions here.
And, I enjoyed the book. I had fun reading it. I was entertained and I cared about the characters. I felt for them and wanted them to be happy. Ultimately, my grade reflects those factors and not much of the other things I have banged on about above. Partly this is because I couldn’t quite figure how to factor them into my rating (what weighting should those things get?) and partly because I tend to grade on enjoyment anyway.
I hope I have set out the issues which may trip other readers up so that they can make an informed decision of whether they may enjoy the book. For me, it’s a B.
Regards,
Kaetrin
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Thank you for this thoughtful review. *click*
I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the book overall and the faith aspects of it, but I’d also love to hear how well you thought the author navigated the triad relationship. I’ve read and enjoyed this author before, but I have to admit I read the description for this book and thought “no way”- without any other context, the idea of saying “hey, there are options for insemination but those are cold and impersonal, so we’ll just do this the old-fashioned way!” sounds incredibly disrespectful to the existing (monogamous? not specified in the blurb…) marriage. I think there are always a lot of (serious, real) concerns for the non-biological parent in these kinds of settings even without this level of emotional/physical entanglement, and I couldn’t imagine reading this without getting really indignant on Shahid’s behalf. From your grade and review, it sounds like however the author managed this worked for you- could you comment on that a little more?
I’d be curious to know if Shahid is Sunni or Shia. While I’ve mentioned the two largest and probably better known denominations, they aren’t the only ones. From your review, Gabe’s religion is specified, so why not Shahid’s?
I’m not comfortable just saying someone is a Muslim (but that’s just me I suppose) . It’s like saying he or she is simply Christian, when Christians come in different denominations also (Jehovah’s Witness, Catholic, Baptists, etc.) with stark differences in the way they worship.
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know just how progressive (and realistic) Shahid’s portrayal is. But based on your review, and from what I’ve researched on Islam, things read a little too . . . Damn, I hate to use the word “whitewashed” but any other term escapes me at the moment. If that appears to be too strong of a term, my apologies in advance.
@Michele Mills: Thx Michele. :)
@Lozza: it’s been a few weeks since I read the book, but I yes, I think it was handled well. It really only showed the beginning of the relationship and touched on the realities of living everyday life via an epilogue some time after the main events of the story of course (that is typical in a romance which mainly deals with a courtship story). They were all good friends beforehand of course so there was an existing and very strong bond of friendship. Gabe and Shahid had been totally monogamous and the story dealt with Shahid’s issues of jealousy over Gabe and his fear that Gabe would leave him for a woman (because Gabe is bi – the narrative clearly shows bisexuality is unrelated to fidelity). Gabe and Shahid discussed the issues and all were in agreement before anything happened. I agree it’s a bit ridiculous to think that a baby had to be made the old fashioned way but that’s the conceit of the story – it was the mechanism to get these three people touching sexually and I was willing to accept it for the sake of the story. There is a sexual relationship which develops between Shahid and Kendra but it is in no way the same as the one between Gabe and Kendra. I really liked how this was explored but I didn’t want to say too much about it in the review because I thought I’d given away plenty already.
@wikkidsexycool: It’s been a while since I read the book. I don’t recall there being any mention of Shia or Sunni in the story but I may have missed it or just forgotten. I’m a Christian and that’s what I call myself. I’m not Catholic or Baptist. I don’t identify as anything other than Christian. So it doesn’t seem odd to me for someone to identify as Muslim and not a particular branch of it. But I don’t know if Muslims always identify as Shia or Sunni, etc. It’s not really something I’ve come across before. FWIW, Shahid read as a devout Muslim to me but I admit I’m in no way an expert in this area.
Hmm, as a Muslim I don’t really identify myself as Sunni or Shia, though I would be called Sunni. Most in USA would be Sunni, or Nation of Islam. Shia or other sects seem more likely to identify themselves. Sunni Muslims are probably less eager to identify themselves cuz sects aren’t considered a good thing.
As for the book, wow! A devout gay Muslim. Honestly don’t see how the two can really go together, being devout and gay. Because if Shahid is a devout Muslim, then he must read the Quran frequently. And the Quran pretty clearly denounces the people of Lot (Sodom and Gomorrah) as men practicing their lusts on other men and being destroyed for their immorality. What does he do when he reads that?
As for the acceptance of an iman and Shahid’s family of his homosexuality? …I’m sure that has and could happen. There are people who don’t really practice Islam or who spin their own interpretations of the Quran to suit their own desires. So yeah, I guess that could happen in some isolated communities, but overall, overwhelmingly the response to someone coming out as a Muslim would be negative. I think the author did that to avoid stereotyping, but some stereotypes are truth based.
Honestly, if Shahid really was a devout Muslim, he would be fighting against his nafs daily. It’s the greatest jihad every practicing Muslim does each day, battling against our selves, our wants, our desires as opposed to Allah’s. I want to sleep, but Allah wants me to pray. That candy with the gelatin looks great, but Allah forbids pork. And on and on. And in Shahid’s case, Allah doesn’t want me to practice lusts with other men etc. etc.
More then his family’s acceptance, I’m surprised there’s no mention of devout Shahid’s angst about his being gay. Because if he’s a practicing homosexual, he would be considered a bad Muslim, at best. I’m not a particularly devout Muslim, just do the basics, yet I angst daily over things like, was that a lie, did I just backbite? Was that frivolous gossip? Etc.
I could go on. Bottom line, seems a very surface knowledge of Islam at best.
@Jazmin: Thank you for chiming in Jazmin. I’m so not an expert on Islam at all – my knowledge is very surface – I had to look up salat and wudu as I was reading because I’d never heard the terms before – that’s how little I know. All I can tell you is that in the book Shahid is very devout. He says his prayers every day and eats only halal foods, keeps Ramadan and references his faith often. But he is also comfortably gay. Maybe there had been angst about it but it’s been so long that he’s reconciled himself to it? I don’t know. The book didn’t go into that at all – which I can see is fair enough from a pacing point of view. I suppose there are progressive Muslims that interpret Sodom and Gomorrah differently (in the same way that progressive Christians do – ie, that S&G was about rape and not homosexuality) but I don’t know enough about it to be sure.
I guess for you the book wouldn’t work because it doesn’t mesh with your experience – and that’s totally fair too. As someone who has basically no experience of Islam, I did question some things but even so it didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of the book. I know that’s very contrary. Sorry!
@Jazmin: Oh, one other thing though – did you read the linked article? The writer of it is a gay Muslim and he doesn’t appear to have any difficulty reconciling his faith and his sexuality so I guess there are Muslims who are okay with it. I understand that’s not your experience though.
We… the Christian bible condemns homosexuality, but we still have gay Catholics, don’t we?
Thanks for the review. I think that Lauren Gallagher /LA Witt is excellent at coming up with really interesting “what if?” scenarios for her books – sometimes the execution works for me and sometimes it doesn’t, but I’ve lost count of how many of her books I’ve read because of the interesting premise. That said, I don’t think I can suspend disbelief enough about the baby making to read this one. (Ask me sometime about my uncle’s hippy friends who had a sperm donner party in the 70s that didn’t involve any partner swapping).
@Evelyn: and there’s a lot of debate as to whether the bible actually condemns homosexuality at all…
As I said in the review, I know there are Christians who are fine with homosexuality and I assume there are Muslims that are as well. What I don’t know is how common it is, particularly in the US where this book is set.
@cleo: I read the baby-making as the excuse needed to get the characters into bed together – it’s certainly set up that Gabe and Shahid would not consider extra marital sex for any other reason (at least at the start). I rolled my eyes a little but I still requested it for review! And I still liked it.
And now I really want to know about your uncle’s party! LOL
@Kaetrin: But I think “devout” is the sticking point for me that doesn’t make sense. Because in my view, he isn’t a devout Muslim, and that’s apart from him being gay etc.
The actions you talked about, prayer, Ramadan are required of ALL Muslims (eating only halal is what i do, but I will eat some Kosher too, because of Jews being people of the book, so for some that’s iffy. Eating non halal meat is iffy, may be wrong or okay depending on how it was slaughtered, by who, etc., but it’s not necessarily a sin like eating pork definitely would be). But the majority of the Muslims I know practice those as part of their daily life.
So I would call Shahid a practicing Muslim, like I am, except of course that he is also practicing a sin when he engages in homosexual behavior. But devout? An example might be a Christian who goes to church. Would you call those who go to church devout Christians? Or what about the ones who go to church every week, Sunday school too, read the Bible regularly, volunteer in church activities etc.? See what I mean?
Yes, I’ve read/heard about gay Muslims. And as I said before, most of the Muslim community would have a problem with them. And I’m not surprised some gay Muslims don’t have a problem with it, and try to justify their behavior. People tend to do that.
@Jazmin: I guess “devout” is in the eye of the beholder. To me, Shahid is. He acts out his faith daily (allowing for the fact that he clearly believes being gay is within his faith and I realise this is not universally accepted) and spends a lot of time in prayer. But if he is not devout in your view, that’s fine. That’ s my descriptor and I based it on my own experience and understandings – I certainly don’t pretend to be an expert on Islam.
FWIW, I wouldn’t call a Christian going to church regularly necessarily “devout” – for me, that word connotes a higher level of engagement. To me, Shahid had a bone deep and personal engagement with his faith and that’s what I was trying to get across.
@Kaetrin– yes, that’s exactly what I mean. :)
Every holy book has multiple interpretations.
@Evelyn: I’m very happy this is the case – I’m definitely not keen on the whole “your wife is your property” vibe in the Old Testament! LOL