1. Gamrah’s mother believes that “woman is to man as butter is to sun.” Do all the men in this novel have a corrupting influence on the women who love them?

2. In what ways are Michelle, Gamrah, Lamees and Sadeem restricted by tradition and how do they work around it?

3. This story of young women looking for love has been compared to books like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Sex and the City. In what ways does Girls of Riyadh’s geographic and social context set it apart from its Western counterparts?

4. When she discovers her husband’s secrets, Gamrah desperately attempts to hold her marriage together. Do you think she is a victim of circumstance or is she guilty of dishonesty in her own right?

5. What role does the widow Um Nuwayyir play for the girls? Is she a positive or negative model for them?

6. What are Michelle, Sadeem, Gamrah and Lamees’s individual relationships to religion and religious law? How do they differ?

7. After a couple of romantic disappointments, Michelle realizes she can never replace her true love with another man. Do you agree with this conclusion and do you view her ending as a happy one?

8. Does this novel have a moral point of view and if so, what is it?

9. During the scene where Lamees graduates from medical school, the narrator describes her joy of “having it all”: love, a career, a new baby on the way. How did Lamees manage to pull off this feat --- was it skill or simply luck?

10. The narrator says early on that every one of her friends “lives huddled in the shadow of a man, or a wall, or a man who is a wall.” Is this true for all of the characters, and is it true even at the end of the story?