Young Adult Book Reviews

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Safiya is a high school student working on the school newspaper who hopes to study journalism in college. She is of Indian American descent, which becomes an issue when hate crimes begin occurring around her school and in her community. First, a boy at a nearby school is arrested for wearing a backpack that a teacher thought was a bomb and in fact ended up being part of his Halloween costume that was comprised of old plastic bottles. After he was cleared and released he was bullied relentlessly until one day he went missing. The police didn’t seem too concerned as they believed he might have fun away, but Safiya has a strong feeling that is not the case and eventually finds his body. Meanwhile, her school newspaper got hacked and her school vandalized by unknown people who seem to believe that all immigrants should be expelled from the country or worse. As Safiya and her friends try to convince the authorities to take these threats seriously, she can’t help but feel like she might be the next target for whoever is committing these crimes. Can she get to the bottom of this without endangering herself? Will the authorities every take her seriously?

Safiya’s story is well written and highly engaging. Safiya desperately wants to find justice for Jawad, the murdered boy, but it’s difficult when no one will see the issues right in front of them. It was interesting how it was depicted that some of her wealthier friends assumed the police would want to know everything they had learned and were super disheartened when that ended up not being the case. The daily struggles of immigrants trying to start over in this country was described in a way that you couldn’t help but feel their constant struggle and fear that people would go out of their way to make their lives harder, or worse, actually hurt them. There’s a lot to discuss with this story from the mystery of who killed Jawad to the social pressures facing immigrants on a daily basis.