I thought it was about time that I'd baptise myself by finally putting up my first review for Blog Critics. Yay. Welcome me with open arms but be gentle with the scathing comments until I've grown a thicker skin.

Anyway, review time.

I had heard very little about Norma Khouri. However, when war broke out, her name suddenly became more prominent in literary circles here in Australia. Before I knew it, I was watching her on television during an interview and I was incensed to go and purchase her book, Forbidden Love.

In the States, I do believe that the book is actually called Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan.

I poured through it in a few short hours.

I was riveted, stunned, shocked, appalled and amazed. I have never read anything as moving as this tale was. The blurb on the back alludes to the general happenings of the story but the author saw fit to also include tidbits of her knowledge and understanding of life for a Jordanian woman living under Muslim law. This extra information brought the story to life in a whole new light.

The author writes the book as a gift to the memory of her friend, Dalia, a pretty Arabian Muslim woman from Amman, Jordan. Growing up together, Dalia and Norma had made a vow to never be separated, never to willingly go into the subservient life they knew waited for them.

To avoid this, the girls opened a beauty salon with their fathers' permission and lived life relatively free, however things go awry when Dalia meets and falls in love with Michael, a Catholic man who is a major in the Royal Army. The story of Forbidden Love takes us through the months that Dalia manages to spend time with Michael alone under the guise of working in the beauty salon with Norma. For a Muslim woman, a relationship with a Catholic man (or any man it seems, for that matter, that is not of her father's or brother's choosing) is forbidden and punishable by death, otherwise known as 'honour killings', as is explained by Khouri in her book:.