ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

Note: this review was written in March 2024, but I refrained from posting it at the time due to the SMP boycott.

I was really excited to read this book when I first heard about it. I still think it's important that this book exists to challenge Islamophobia, and to give voice to so many Muslim teens out there, who feel voiceless and powerless. I appreciated the Muslim representation, specifically Nida's attachment to her hijab.

But this book has a lot of issues as well.

Look, I'm a fairly logical reader. It's not that I set out to poke holes into every story, but sometimes they're so blatant that I can't not notice them, and that was sadly the case here. Throughout the book, regular chapters are interspersed with some of Nida's poetry about the things that are happening to her. I thought it was too much poetry, but that's my personal preference, and not something I count against the book. A big part of the plot is how Nida loses the ability to write poetry, and thereby loses her voice. But the poetry continues. And it's not old poems, because they're all relevant to where the plot is at that point. But Nida can't write them.

There's also a kind of weird magical realism element, which honestly wasn't necessary, but also not really an issue, until the author uses it to conveniently allow Nida to see the past, give us a history lesson, show her exactly what happened to her family before she was born, so she could then use this information to talk to her mother.

I think the part that annoyed me the most was how the author chose to wrap this up, and the message that they will still vote for the Islamophobic politician, because the other choice is worse! And I don't think that's the lesson I want teenagers to learn, because there are other options. I am not American, but I asked an American friend a few questions about how elections work, and granted, it's a complicated system. I don't remember what state this takes place in, and even if I did, I wouldn't know what laws apply in this state. But there could have been an independent candidate as a third option. There could have been a write-in campaign as a show of protest. There could have literally been any other message to teenagers, in 2024, when we are seeing a live genocide, than "vote for the bad guy anyway because the other guy is worse".