Review: "Sorry, Bro" by Taleen Voskuni

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni
Published January 2023 via Berkley
★★★

When Nar's boyfriend proposes, the answer should be easy. Instead she more or less faints and runs away—a surefire sign that something is not going quite to plan. And while he's willing to wait (and to try to make a German American out of her?), Nar is finally willing to accept her mother's pleas to explore her Armenian heritage...and perhaps meet some nice Armenian men along the way. Emphasis on men. No women. Definitely not.

This is somewhere between three and four stars for me, and I suspect that the cover is pushing it up. I like the romantic interest and I like the emphasis on cultural heritage—I picked this up in large part because I don't think I've read any other novels dealing with Armenian-American identity—and I like that Nar lives at home as an adult and is perfectly happy doing so. But...I don't know if I really see the connection between Nar and Erebuni, beyond of course hormones, and I'd have loved to know a bit more about Erebuni's background and why she is so invested in her heritage—it flavors just about everything she does, and as the book goes on it becomes clear that all things Armenian will soon flavor Nar's life as well. And...that's both a selling point for me (learning things about other cultures, yay) and something that feels as though the entire goal of the book is to remind people that there is more to Armenia than genocide. So...hit, miss, and quite a bit in between.