The controversial ending, where Najwa accepts a payment from Tamer's mother to give him up, may prove disquieting for readers steeped in the tradition of secular romance with its normative expectations. The presence of monetary exchange—in effect a bribe—in parting the two lovers stands in striking contravention of what would ordinarily be considered a satisfactory romance resolution. … That it jars as a denouement is testimony to a kind of generic idealism in the response to romance fiction, where a certain emplotment and narrative trajectory are expected automatically to result in a particular kind of outcome.

XREF: Connects to reader-response theory and generic conventions in popular fiction studies.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 505