Review of Good Girl by Aria Aber

*Good Girl* by Aria Aber (2025). Published by Hogarth.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m watching.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

If you’re a more frequent reader of my blog, especially my book reviews, you’ll probably learn that there is one major way I source my books: by wandering my local library. I am blessed to be inside of an incredible library system where I often don’t have to worry about censorship (as of right now), and they’ve been increasingly diversifying the kinds of authors and national literatures that they’ve brought onto the shelves.

It was through my local library that I was able to put a hold in for a copy of Aria Aber’s Good Girl before the book had even arrived at the library. They have a system where once they order a book, you can start putting hold requests in. When the book arrives, you can be the first person to read it from their distribution. I was the first person on the hold list for Good Girl, so I received it first.

I’ve loved Aber’s poetry for so many years now, and when I found out originally she was coming out with a novel, I planned to buy a copy. Unfortunately my financial situation isn’t the greatest right now because of an unexpected unemployment stint, so I haven’t had the chance (at the time of typing this) to get a physical copy.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction, as I know many readers are coming for the review part of this post.

A young Afghan-German girl finds herself on the cusp of change in a year full of partying, romance, and bad decisions.

Our main character in this novel is Nila, and buckle up, because this novel is a wild ride with her. She was born to middle class Afghan parents who fled Afghanistan for Germany with nothing from their homes. Despite having medical degrees and being fully capable of practicing medicine, the German system would not let them be doctors due to their rules and regulations, leaving the family to find other ways to make income.

Nila was raised in Berlin in the projects, where swastikas are drawn on the walls and people are targeted based on their religion or ethnicity. This becomes a more prominent theme throughout the book, although it’s not always the direct focus of Nila’s struggles.

Whether it’s a Turkish shop getting bombed by young white Germans, or someone else being targeted for being perceived as Muslim, these little hints in the writing remind of the reality Nila is grappling with. It becomes more real towards the end of the book, especially as Nila tries to grow up and move on with her life.

But as Nila grew older, she did not want to be the standard Afghan girl her parents expected her to be. This is very apparent from her actions in the novel. She’s fairly reckless, and becomes involved with the American writer named Marlowe. Their relationship is so toxic and that’s one of the main focuses later on in the book.

I did not care for their relationship, which is probably the point, and was more interested in the personal conflict happening within Nila. She’s in-between cultures and expectations, and she very much wants to be an artist. She enrolls in some classes at the local college in order to get free access to museums and galleries, but doesn’t fully commit.

This is what draws her into Marlowe’s orbit. He wrote a smash hit novel about a decade or so prior, and now he’s kind of become a has-been in the literary world. But it was that initial success as an artist that partially draws Nila in, and as she gets sucked more into the underground arts scene of Berlin, she begins making more drastic decisions compared to before.

At the beginning of the novel, Nila is only 19, which means she has an entire life ahead of her. She doesn’t know who she wants to be, and maybe by the end of the novel, she still doesn’t know. But this is a book that lingers on the journey of getting there, stuffed with prose that makes her Berlin (and some other locations) come alive.

Overall Thoughts

I didn’t love this novel due to the bad romance element, but I think that stems from the fact I am so sad for Nila because she deserves better. I completely understand why this plot point was done, and I appreciate it, so this part of my feelings doesn’t really say anything about the novel itself. It’s more of me being not happy for the protagonist.

That said, I have always loved Aber’s writing, and to see her delve into fiction is truly a delight. I love this new trend of poets writing novels and short story collections from Ocean, Kaveh, and Sally doing it to Aria now too. All of these poets are people I really look up to, and I haven’t been disappointed by the quality of their prose.

This written really well—Berlin comes alive on its pages, and we see it the way Nila goes through the city. Lots of little details packed into short sentences, which makes them punch even harder. There were some sections I found a bit dense and more difficult to get through because of this though.

I say if you’re interested in the synopsis or the themes of the novel, go ahead and pick it up. I think it’s worth reading at least once and giving a chance!

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