Aarzu All Around

Aarzu balances school, work, chores and cricket, while facing the pressures of her family.

Recently orphaned Aarzu and her younger sister live with their aunt, uncle and two cousins in Karachi, Pakistan, where they are treated as second-class burdens by their uncle, while also expected to do all the chores and contribute to running the household. Aarzu, however, dreams of being a cricket player just like her father, but according to her uncle, girls should be housewives and nothing more. 
When Aarzu’s sister requires medical treatment, Aarzu and her aunt struggle to obtain the necessary funds, and Aarzu winds up disguising herself as a boy in order to get a better-paying job as a servant at a nearby rich man’s bungalow. Now, she has to balance her real life (school and chores at home) with her secret life (cricket at school and her new job), while hiding her earnings from her nosy cousin long enough to save her sister. 
This is a novel in verse (my favorite!) which plays around with a variety of poetic forms. Aarzu’s feelings about her situation, her grief about her parents’ death, her immediate frustration with her uncle’s restrictions on her behavior, and her inability to help her sister as quickly as she would like to are portrayed clearly. (If you’re not a sportsy person, don’t let the cricket info dump at the beginning of the book scare you off, the cricket information is woven through seamlessly without intimidating the reader.)