Review: Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Darius the Great is Not Okay follows Darius Kellner, a biracial high school student without strong connections to his peers who accompanies his family on a trip to Iran to visit his mother’s dying father. We explore Darius' relationships with his family, particularly his tense relationship with his idealized father, and his thoughts about either not being Persian enough or being to Persian depending on the situation. The book also focuses on how Darius and others handle his depression.

This book was a really wonderful character-focused story, which is not something I read all that often and I really enjoyed it! I particularly liked the focus on isolation and the feeling of being othered, it is so authentic and raw and was very emotionally resonant. I cried a lot. This book was both a wonderful look into someone not like me and deeply relatable. AKA it did the thing that reading fiction is meant to do.

I am unsure if I should mention this book for having queer rep or not, my typical line of thinking is that I don't think about a book as having queer characters if a character is not clearly presented as such but this book really does seem like an exception. I think the slice of Darius' life presented here is more heavily focused on other aspects of life he is processing. Still, it does seem clear at times that Darius is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, even if he does not give it much thought throughout the story. It is actually quite a change from a lot of queer books that I have read to see a character whose story does not focus on romance, though I am aware that the sequel does have a romance plotline (and we all know I am a sucker for a love story).

I always love a family-focused novel, the way the relationships between family members slowly unfold themselves is very deftly done, most of my pretty intense tears stemmed from the family relationships.

I don't typically love books with lots of pop culture references, and this book has quite a few. I didn't find it alienating or distracting from the thrust of the narrative and actually felt like it really builds Darius as a rounded character, though it did take me a little bit to fully get used to. They are mostly to Star Trek and Lord of the Rings, both things I have very narrow exposure towards. The character voice, in general, took me a bit, but once I started to love Darius as a character I became completely at ease with his manner of thinking and commonly used phrases. If you don't like pop culture or novels that can be described as 'voice-y' you should probably be aware of what you are getting into. I was so touched by the story that I can't really knock any stars off for things that might otherwise have grated.

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph. I would recommend this to people who love character-focused serious YA contemporary, YA novels that focus on family, and people who like a character-focused novel.