Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating is a contemporary young adult novel by Adiba Jaigirdar, published in 2021. Set in Ireland, the story follows Humaira “Hani” Khan, a Bangladeshi Muslim teenager, and Ishita “Ishu” Dey, a studious, reserved, and unpopular student.
The central conflict arises when Hani comes out as bi to her closest friends, Aisling and Deirdre, who react with skepticism and question her identity, claiming she cannot be bi because she has only dated boys. Under the pressure of not feeling validated, Hani insists she is in a relationship with Ishita “Ishu” Dey, whom her friends openly despise. Ishu agrees to their fake relationship on one condition: that Hani help her become more popular to increase her chances of being elected Head Girl, a key position for her academic future and her relationship with her parents. What begins as a strategy gradually becomes a genuine bond as both girls face social tensions, prejudice, jealousy, and cultural conflict.
From the very beginning, Hani’s bisexuality is presented explicitly and becomes the driving force of the conflict. The issue does not lie in her identity itself, but in the constant delegitimization by her friends, who dismiss it as confusion or reinterpret it as lesbianism, refusing to acknowledge bisexuality as valid.
One of the clearest examples of biphobia comes from Aisling, who emotionally manipulates Hani by appealing to their lifelong friendship and downplaying her relationship with Ishu as something temporary and less valuable. Under the guise of concern and affection, she completely denies Hani’s bisexuality, reinforcing the weight of the conflict in the story:
Don’t worry. Dee and I will find you someone way better than Ishita. Even a girl if you really swing that way.
Aisling also insists on a binary logic:
I don’t know why you’re being so weird about it. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal. You’re going to end up with one or the other at the end of the day, so.
She even accuses Hani of using bisexuality to seem “interesting” and pits it against her Muslim identity, as if being religious and queer were incompatible or suspicious:
This whole bisexuality thing is your way of seeming interesting or whatever. Like you’re so Muslim you won’t even drink a drop of alcohol and you want us to think you’re for real gay?
In contrast, Hani’s parents respond with support. Although they admit they needed time to adjust their expectations, they never question her orientation. Ishu, meanwhile, plays a crucial role as a validating figure. Unlike Hani’s friends, she directly points out the harm caused by invalidation and insists that Hani deserves relationships where her bisexuality is not questioned, becoming a counterpoint of support and legitimacy within the narrative.
The novel also offers an intersectional perspective by portraying queer Muslim characters of Bangladeshi origin in Ireland, a setting rarely explored in young adult literature. In the Irish context, Jaigirdar depicts a queer experience shaped by religion, migration, small communities, and a culture that has rapidly changed in recent decades, showing how these dimensions intertwine in the lives of her protagonists.
Adiba Jaigirdar has explained in interviews that she wrote this story as a response to sapphic and bisexual representations she found unsatisfying. Her goal was to create a narrative where sapphic characters not only face realistic conflicts but also have access to happy endings. In this sense, the author emphasizes the importance of offering hopeful conclusions to sapphic characters, something historically denied to them in many queer stories. Here, realism is not limited to pain: it also encompasses the possibility of joy, love, and validation. The novel thus serves as a reclamation of space, an affirmation that being bisexual and sapphic is not an inevitable tragedy, but part of a complex, fulfilling, and ultimately hopeful experience.