Blog Tour|Not The Girls You’re Looking For by Aminah Mae Safi

I love the works of Jane Austen. I think I might love her books in a way that is beyond words— which for a writer is saying something. There’s something about an author that can write a book that is so entertaining and so literary at the same time. Books that hold up as well to a close reading as they do to a re-read simply for the joy of it. Stories that do well as audiobooks and film adaptations— multiple film adaptations.

I know I’m not alone in this love of mine. Aunt Jane’s fan are legion and many are even more rabid that myself. I can make no claim as to whether I succeeded in writing a book as literary as thoughtful as her. But I can claim this— I aimed to write a story that dealt with the issues of the day by making them deeply personal. I wanted to take big discussions and make them small. And take people who are normally seen as smaller, more insignificant characters in the grand scheme of things, and make their stories feel big and important.

Those were the footsteps I tried to follow in.

Lulu is a girl with a good deal of class privilege. She’s also not necessarily set to become the next UN Human Rights Attorney or aiming to become the first human on Mars. She could be those things, if she decided to. But in many ways, her concerns are ordinary— family, friendship, falling in love.

But they are hers and she has to deal with falling in love on her own terms, rather than someone else’s. She has to learn how to seek forgiveness as she would, rather than as anyone else could tell her how. She has to learn how to be the kind of friend she actually wants to be.

That is something I learned from Jane Austen. How to tell a small story in an epic way. How to make the people the world finds the most insignificant— teenage girls— and make their lives feel central and important. Jane Austen was among the first to give us the interiority of young women as they were growing up. I’d like to think, if anything, I can at least live up to that legacy.

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James stood and started feeling through his pockets. “We went out for barbeque earlier.”

Lulu didn’t understand the gibberish he was rambling. She wanted him to go away, and leave her alone, like she’d never been found to begin with. He didn’t even go here. How had he possibly gotten a ticket to the party, Lulu wondered. She fought back more tears, these of pride.

He wasn’t looking at her, though. Finally, he seemed to have found the object of his search. “And they always give us these.” He closed the space between them in two perfunctory steps, handing her a small square packet.

Lulu saw what he offered– a moist towelette. She stared.

“I thought. You wanted to clean up. I think. I don’t care. I thought you might want it.” He must have noticed her wiping up her face.

Lulu didn’t know what to say, so she took it. He sat beside her without further comment. She mopped under her eyes, clearing what must be a mass of mascara and eyeliner pooling there. She slapped her cheeks lightly. She took a deep inhale and turned her face to him– her sparkling, charming smile plastered across her face again.

“How’s it look?”

“Better. I think. I mean, your nose is red. But the rest of your makeup looks good.”

Lulu ought to have been affronted by the honesty, but she wasn’t. She appreciated it. “It couldn’t. Not after.”

James tilted his head, then, motioning towards her. “May I?”

“What are you going to do?” Lulu leaned back, mistrusting both him and herself in such a moment.

He curled his fingers back, unsure. “You. You have a… thingy. Just there.” He touched a lock of her wig resting by the outer corner of her eye. He pulled back again. “I’m sure you can get it.”

There was a vulnerability in him in that moment that Lulu couldn’t resist. She tilted her face towards him. “This help?”

“Sure,” he said, his voice maddeningly steady.

James clamped his lips as he made a hesitant move towards her. Lulu closed her eyes. She felt a light tickle at her temples. Curiosity got the better of Lulu. Her eyes flashed open and they made direct contact with his. Lulu shut her eyes again quickly.

He stayed his movements. “Hold still, please.”

“I’m not sure what this is. I think. I think it’s fuzz.” His fingers grazing the edge of her wig. They pulled delicately through her false hair. “Got it.”

Lulu’s eyes fluttered open. She cleared her throat. “Is it better?”

He placed one set of her false eyelashes into her hand. “Wasn’t all that bad to begin with.”

Lulu couldn’t look him in the eye anymore. The moment was too strange, too intimate.

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This Blog Tour is hosted by Aimee, Always. Check her out and check out the rest of the blog tour!

Until next time,