This is a collection of short stories. It is written so beautifully. The stories cover all different topics.
This book should be read by everyone as it’s something special and unique.

A collection of beautiful, heartfelt and emotional stories of loneliness, secrets, resentments, grief and longing.

Tender, inquisitive, sometimes heartbreaking, but always reflective, honest and touching, Huma Qureshi's stories took me completely by surprise. Strained mother-daughter relationships, husband and wife growing distant, a mother grieving her unborn child, a woman losing touch with her best friend. Each story brought the main character to life within its few pages and made me care for her and her struggles, I felt entranced by each scenario the author brought to life.
With an additional layer of cultural differences highlighted by each main character living in England while being of Middle Eastern descent, with different parental expectations, family traditions and customs, these stories beautifully depict a modern woman's life in all its shades.

A breathtaking collection of stories about our most intimate relationships: the misunderstandings between families, the silences between friends and the dissonance between lovers.
Enjoyable read

An authentic and compelling collection of short stories dealing with a host of issues, tensions and drama that form part of our everyday lives and relationships with others. There will be something everyone can connect to and it will provoke reflection on our own relationships. Beautifully observes, articulated and written.

I loved these stories of culture clash and relationships, of the parental expectations and the often surprising endings that they offered. It felt fresh to read about these feelings, in many ways some universal themes of wanting to fit in, of finding your tribe and doing your family proud, but these came across in a new way and were told in a way that made them new.

This is a beautiful collection of stories. There are stories about girls who are not allowed to explore their budding sexuality, intercultural couples that drift apart when exotic destinations reveal rifts between them, turbulent mother-daughter relationships that spiral into matricide in different guises, and protracted depression following births and miscarriages.

What is common between all ten stories is the portrayal of dead ends in relationship where there is no longer any possibility of communication. Qureshi presents these heartbreaking silences with precision and poetry. Her style reminds me a bit of Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories in ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, with the same incisiveness and intensity, same attention to small gestures and understated drama.

I found all the stories incredibly moving. They resonate with me so much that at times it’s almost triggering. But at the same time, they make me feel seen, understood, and comforted.

This is an exceptional collection of short stories from Huma Qureshi, a lyrical and beautiful writer, who explores the territory of our most intimate relationships, and the theme of what is left unsaid within them. These wide ranging stories cover cultural and generational tensions, interracial relationships, marriages, family, motherhood, differing mother-daughter dynamics, class, gender, friendships and so much more that marks the ordinariness of the everyday lives that the author elevates to the extraordinary with her razor sharp observations and astute insights. There are the lies, secrets, despair, love, loneliness, loss, grief and silence that many readers will relate to, particularly as there is a universality that crosses cultural boundaries when it comes to the nature of human relationships, repeating themselves in their many forms throughout our history.

Set in numerous locations, London, rural England, Tuscany, and Lahore, we have a young girl building up a covert relationship of longing with a boy, where little is said, that culminates in her being punished in a community where the reputation of girls and women can be so easily besmirched by rumours and lies. There is a mother who never feels at home in a rural setting, unlike her husband and daughter, when her father dies, the daughter becomes a jam maker. Events come to a head when a daughter can no longer put up with a mother that has always been critical of her, and another mother is shocked and griefstricken when her daughter cuts her off without a word. In Pakistan, Mark discovers the woman he loves, Amina, is nothing like the woman he knew in London, she becomes spoilt, mean and demanding, a woman of privilege, rude and cruel to those she deems socially beneath her.

Friendships can fail the test of time and changing circumstances, an exhausted mother walks away from a husband who doesn't see or understand her, and 3 miscarriages have a woman buckling under the weight of her losses, pushed to the edges of insanity, until she finds comfort in Japanese myths and legends as she begins to make 1000 paper cranes (birds) that allow her to reconnect with those she loves. Qureshi perceptively and vividly evokes the quagmires that so often go hand in hand with our closest relationships, the strains, desperation, the love, tenderness, and the conflicts between traditions and obligations with inner desires. The emotions and feelings, and the characters that inhabit the stories resonate, there is a commonality and authenticity that will captivate readers. This is a gifted author that I am delighted to have discovered and I look forward with great anticipation to whatever she writes next. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Never before have I read a collection of short stories where I loved each story equally and felt connected to all characters. It’s amazing how Huma Qureshi draws us into the lives of her characters. We feel their deepest emotions and experience the cultural & generational differences within their relationships. And see what happens when so many words are left unsaid..

Some stories left me wanting more and would be perfect as stand-alone novel. My personal favorites were: Firecracker, The Jam Maker, Too Much, Waterlogged and The Wishes. But like I said I loved every story. Highly recommended!

Beautiful. Poignant. Phenomenal.
This was a beautiful read and I learnt so much. I cried and I smiled and there was nothing more that I wanted from this book. Truly a gem.

Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi was even better than I had expected – and after reading her memoir earlier this year, my expectations were pretty high. This collection of short stories is poetic, intense, and beautifully written, a collection where each installment has an edge of darkness, or sadness. I loved how she captured small moments, sometimes just fragments of a movement, that let the reader get to know a character that little bit better. Huma draws these characters – mothers and daughters, lovers, friends – so deftly that each story felt as deep as a novel. (And talking of novels, I can't wait to read Huma's debut novel when it comes out, either!)

Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi is a varied collection of short stories exploring themes such as cultural and generational clashes, relationships, motherhood, friendship.

This is a gorgeous and beautiful collection of stories about love, identity and how confusing and utterly heartbreaking love can be. There are tales of anger, hurt, death, pain, love and loss but also there’s redemption and grief. This book really makes you look at yourself and relationships of those around you and what their tales are. I really loved this wonderful short stories collection.

Huma Qureshi has such a wonderful writing style. She knows how to draw the reader into the character's life and see the world through their eyes. The vividness of her writing also makes it easy to visualise the settings - whether it is a rural English village or the hustle and bustle of Lahore.

Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love is just that - words that should to be said out aloud, but aren't, conversations that need to be had, but are suppressed by emotions within; this is the constant theme in all the stories.

Subject-wise, the stories are diverse. There are stories about fractured relationships, losing a loved one and the alienation that a partner suddenly and realistically finds themselves in whilst being in a mixed race relationship - just to name a few.

I really liked all the stories; the only downside for me was that I wanted to read more when it came to several of these stories. What became of these people? One can only imagine.

I enjoyed Huma's book 'How We Met' and loved her writing style, so was happy to receive an ARC from Netgalley for this, her new book, which is a collection of short stories.

I won't detail any of the stories as it would spoil it for the reader but exceptional writing once again. The stories are sad and poignant and are between mothers and daughters, boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife and friends. I had a few favourites but I liked them all in equal measures. Very clever writing.

I can't wait to read more from Huma, I just love her writing. Even her dedication in this book to her husband and sons brought tears to my eyes!

Recommended (and if you haven't read her previous book 'How We Met', I can't recommend it highly enough).

Comprising nine brief stories, Huma Qureshi’s Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love is a quietly insightful and reflective collection, leaving her readers with much to think about. Her stories are underpinned by themes of cultural differences and expectations, the navigation of mixed-race relationships, marriage, love and family. They often catch her characters at a decisive point in their lives in which so many things are been left unsaid. Vivid descriptive language draws you in to her characters' worlds, whether it be an English village, the Tuscan countryside or the streets of Lahore. Qureshi has a knack of conveying a great deal in a few carefully chosen words. Even her acknowledgements are marked by a touching understated gracefulness. There's not a single dud in this collection which marks Quershi's first venture into fiction. I very much hope it won’t be her last

'Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love' is a striking collection of short stories from the author of 'How We Met.' A poignant exploration into the intimacy of relationships in all it's forms - parents, spouses, lovers, friends and the deep emotions these relationships can invoke.

From Summer, a darkly beautiful tale about a daughter who cracks under the pressure of a mother who relentlessly criticizes her and won't shut up, so she shuts her up forever, to Waterlogged - where a couple go away for the first time since their baby is born and reflect on the life they'd wanted compared to the one they are living. My personal favorite was Firecracker - a poetic and heartfelt look at friendship as a woman thinks about her relationship with her best friend, how she isn't sure if she really loves her anymore, and how a relationship can end without people even knowing sometimes.

Deeply evocative, this collection of short stories is sure to resonate with readers in a very real and personal way - and maybe leave us to think about the many different relationships that surround us in life.

This is such a lovely collection of short stories that i think would resonate with a lot of people due to the subject matters of the stories. They are so well written, with such good storylines and great settings, a really enjoyable read.