BLOG TOUR Review: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

I received an e-arc of this book as part of the blog tour organised by Random Things Tours. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Publisher: Penguin
Publication expected: 3rd July 2025
Pages: 368

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Synopsis

Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella’s life – an emptiness once filled by love.

So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change, she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored.

The Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerising tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself. It has sold over 500,000 copies internationally, and is now getting a fresh new, fully redesigned look.

My Thoughts…

Despite having seen Elif Shafak’s books around many, many times, I had never read any of her work. So, when the opportunity to join this blog tour came, I jumped at the chance to finally read one of the author’s most famous books. Shafak’s books have been praised far and wide, and this book boasts an impressive average rating on Goodreads, so my expectations were very high. Perhaps this was my mistake, and my expectations were too high, but I feel as though I didn’t find something to match them in this book. Now, I didn’t dislike the book, but I also wasn’t blown away. To be perfectly honest, it was just fine for me, which is what made this review so hard to write.

The premise is actually very intriguing. Ella, a lonely, depressed housewife in the USA, starts reading an unpublished manuscript about 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi and his companion/mentor Shams of Tabriz. By exploring the lives and teachings of the two mystics, Ella is compelled to change her life and is determined to meet the manuscript’s mysterious author. This is a classic book-within-a-book set-up, as we readers follow both present-day Ella and Sweet Blasphemy, the fictional manuscript which is itself narrated through multiple POVs. So far, so good.

I don’t know enough about Sufism to weigh in on how historically accurate this is, but I enjoyed reading and learning more about it. Those parts of the book that focused more on Shams and Rumi’s relationship and their philosophical and spiritual quest were by far my favourites. The author’s writing style also worked very well for those sections, enhancing their mystical qualities in a way that reminded me of the feeling of reading Paulo Coelho’s books. The short chapters further made the story flow easily, so that despite the topics tackled it was a smooth read.

I had a few issues with this though, which mainly boil down to the characters and their (lack of) development. As I already mentioned, there are several POVs here – arguably a few too many – which should serve to provide different perspectives from which to observe Shams and Rumi, and reflect on their teachings. Regrettably, though, none of these characters felt developed at all beyond being a generic placeholder for highly stereotypical and one-dimensional figures.

So, we are presented with the exploited prostitute seeking spiritual redemption, the shunned leper beggar, the wise benevolent drunk, the violent enforcer, or the close-minded religious extremist, and so on. Their main purpose seems to be acting as conduits through which Shams’s titular forty rules can be presented to the reader. Although I did like the forty rules themselves and the idea to have other characters show us Shams through their eyes, this often felt clumsy. And by this I mean characters literally saying things like: “Rule number so-and-so says this: [proceeds to enunciate the rule]”.

I was also surprised by how little space any of the female characters is given within this narrative. They are essentially left to play the mother, the wife or the prostitute, with no role or agency beyond what Shams – directly or indirectly – gives them. Although, to a certain extent, that could be said of most characters. There was also a certain degree of orientalism that seemed to permeate the novel – manifesting itself especially but not exclusively in Ella’s POV – which I was not expecting in a novel written by a Turkish author, but which was nonetheless somewhat disturbing.

Despite the issues I had with it, the historical part of the novel was still interesting. Whereas I can’t really say the same of the present-day storyline. Ella’s character is as flat as they come – a housewife and mother-of-three who is thoroughly disappointed with her life finding new resolve once she stumbles upon the exotic mysticism embodied by the mysterious author of the book she’s reading. I’m heading near spoiler territory here, so I won’t say more, but I found this to be the weakest part of the book and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have felt its absence had it been removed from the book.

If you read this far, thank you! I had actually not meant to write such a long review, but overall, I feel very conflicted about this book and needed to get my thoughts out fully. Like I said at the start, I didn’t dislike the book despite all the issues I had with it, and picking it up at night never felt like a chore. There were also some really beautiful passages, especially in the more reflective and spiritual/philosophical parts, that I found to be very touching.

However, I was expecting more from this book than a collection of meaningful quotes and I found that to be quite lacking. I seem to definitely be in the minority on this, though, as many other readers seem to have adored this book! I would like to try reading more of Shafak’s books too, as I’m curious to see if I’ll end up liking any of her other works better. Let me know in the comments if there are any you’d recommend I try next!

Rating: 3/5

Huge thanks to the author, the publisher and Random Things Tours for having me on this tour! Be sure to check out the other stops as well for more great content.