... unfolds like a thriller, only it’s true ...Maher’s investigation of Baloch’s life and death is remarkable: It is not just the story of one rebellious woman but a study of an entire country and culture in collision with the new demands of the Internet, reality TV and women determined to shake off old strictures. Maher, a journalist based in Karachi, is a patient and transparent narrator, telling us where accounts conflict, which interviewees are unreliable and what questions must go unanswered. Her style of writing — stark and sometimes poetic — befits her subject.

In A Woman Like Her, an exemplary work of investigative journalism, Sanam Maher delves into the story of a woman as misunderstood in death as in life. Maher conducted hundreds of interviews — with Baloch’s family, the media, mullahs, feminist activists, experts in cybercrime — to indict the society that enabled and applauded Baloch’s murder. Waseem Azeem and his associates killed Qandeel Baloch, Maher argues, but they did not act alone.

... compelling and disturbing.

... unfolds like a thriller, only it’s true.

... deeply researched and vividly written .. Rather than piece together a straightforward biography, Maher amplifies and explicates the tensions that characterized the life and death of the internet celebrity through portraits, interviews, and media criticism.

Maher offers a nuanced portrait of Baloch in the many roles she tried and discarded over the course of her short life.

In her first book, Maher...delves deeply into the brief life of Qandeel Baloch...discovering a desperate attempt to assert agency regarding her own fate in a society determined to silence her.

Journalist Maher debuts with an immersive and eye-opening account.