Last week I sat down to read Iman Hariri-Kia’s new novel, Female Fantasy. I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it, and I don’t want to review it so much as just hand it out. You get a copy, and you get a copy, and you and you and you get copies. Everybody on BookTok gets a copy. Most importantly, everybody who’s ever looked down their nose at romance in general or romantasy in particular gets a copy. Everyone can read it, have whatever epiphanies they need to have, and nod in understanding. And then we’ll all live happily ever after and never argue about anything again.
Curious? Meet Joonie, Nico, and Ryke.
Joonie, a copywriter in the quaint seaside town of Mystic, still hasn’t given up on finding true love, despite a long, disappointing history with men. Nico, her first crush, was also the first man to break her heart, and even though he wasn’t the person who hurt her the worst, he’s still on her bad side.
Thanks to a well-timed book recommendation, Joonie has an ideal man to look up to: Ryke, the hero of her favorite romantasy series, A Tale of Salt Water and Secrets. Ryke is the reason Joonie still believes in love and keeps dating, even though her dates have led to nothing but further disappointment and disaster.
When Joonie finds out that Ryke was based on a real person, she decides that this man must be her soulmate, and she needs to go to New York to find him. Nico is appalled, but he has business in New York, so he offers Joonie a ride, which she reluctantly accepts.
And then, the story takes an unexpected turn.
Hariri-Kia packs a lot of food for thought into this narrative, and if she had focused solely on Joonie and Nico’s story, this would’ve been a banger of a book. What makes it next-level, however, is the fact that the main narrative is broken up with actual chapters from A Tale of Salt Water and Secrets. Yep, you get two books for the price of one here, and if someone doesn’t contract Hariri-Kia to flesh out ATOSAS, I’m going to be really disappointed, because Merriah and Ryke’s story is just as good as Joonie and Nico’s.
I loved being able to follow Joonie’s fandom and see what she sees in Ryke and his universe. There’s something very healing about ATOSAS that a lot of women will be able to relate to. The underwater world Hariri-Kia has created has an interesting political system and conflict, and Merriah’s journey to agency explains exactly what women want in great detail, to the point where anyone who reads it and still doesn’t understand would have to be lying, illiterate, or straight-up evil.
Female Fantasy is about the search for true love, but it’s also about the longing to be understood, accepted, and valued just as one is, without having to change, shrink, or hide anything. Watching Nico slowly come to understand what Joonie sees in ATOSAS almost made me cry. Hariri-Kia does touch on themes of DV and emotional neglect, but in a very trauma-informed way, and in a way that shows that healing is possible. And if that sounds too heavy? Let me assure you, this book is hysterically funny on top of everything else.
Honestly, it’s the perfect romance novel. It explains why so many women love the genre, and what they get out of it. And it does it by way of a darned good story, as opposed to a lecture or a long comments thread. Highly recommended.
