While I love this book, it also ripped my heart to pieces. Such a great read to add to a classroom library so that students have window books.

Starts out as a sweet YA romance love triangle of sorts, and then delves into deeper issues throughout. A solid YA rec for teens interested in romance but who also want their stories to address harder topics and realities of life in America for the underrepresented.

Very much a story for people fresh to contemporary YA romance, Love, Hate, and Other Filters will likely most appeal to high school students on the precipice of considering what major career and lifelong decisions they hope to make.

Perfect for a high school library! Raises some great conversations around race and identity while also making the main character relatable and intersting.

I love this book, it was so well written. Maya makes sense to me. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard. I like the pacing of this novel, how it balances tough issues along with the cute bits one comes to expect in many YA novels. This novel made me feel a range of emotions. It was engaging, thought-provoking, and impacted my worldview.
I have put it in my classroom book club cycle. I think this story is well told and needs to be in the hands of many.

“We must build bridges, conquer hate with love, and meet intolerance with a renewed commitment to education and open-mindedness. From many, we are one.”
― Samira Ahmed, Love, Hate and Other Filters

Well written, a topic every one should read about. Her struggles are ones any human can understand regardless of cultural background.

Read this for Indigo's Teen SPOTM decision group. This is the title that I voted for this month. I really appreciated the POV -- it's one that I hadn't seen a lot of in the YA market at the time.

I really appreciated reading a story so unlike my own life. This is an eye-opening story about a Muslim American teen who faces discrimination and harassment daily, which worsens after a terrorist attack from a Muslim extremist. Overall I would have liked more tom the story, but it was intriguing enough to keep me reading!

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed.

Maya Aziz is a teen Muslim American HS girl, and just like many teen girls, totally boy crazy. She also loves shooting videos and learning about movie making, much to the dismay of her parents, who have other plans for her. But just when she begins to get a taste of her new found freedom, hate rears it's ugly head, leaving Maya's family terrified.

It's interesting sometimes to notice a string of themes in the books you read, because I just finished The Beauty of Your Face, which was perhaps a grown up version of this book?

First off, kids need to read books written by people of color, about people of color. It cannot be easy to be Muslim in this country and to be so grossly misjudged because of the radicals that people associate with them. The Muslim religion is very cloaked in peace, and love, and family. I always enjoy reading about it.

Having said that, OH the DrAmA! My goodness, was I Maya at that age? Probably. Would I have driven myself bonkers if I were to meet the seventeen year old me? Most definitely.

To be fair, I listened to this, and the voice actress slathered on the emotion in every sentence. I don't know if I would have perceived it to be so over-the-top. But, c'mon. Girl goes on one date with a boy that she barely knows, and then said date goes awry and then she falls to bits. Uuuuugh, I'm too old for it.

BUT, it also hit on some very real and sensitive issues that people of the Muslim faith have been confronted with. Stepping foot into that reality really hit home for me and I felt like maybe the author needed Maya to wear every emotion on her sleeve in order for the reader to really understand what she was going through.

this book is such an incredible perspective and i enjoyed every single aspect of this novel and the characters, and the issues that it dealt with so honestly.

This started out as a romance and then became something more! It takes a look at love, Islamophobia, and being a child of an immigrant family. It seemed to be a realistic look at what it must be like for a girl like Maya in this day and age. It was eye opening and enjoyable on many levels.

I know this book has won awards and accolades, but I just didn't love it. It felt a little too contrived and predictable. I know I'm in the minority with this review.

I was given free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Muslim American teen Maya Aziz lives in a small town outside of Chicago where she often hides behind the lens of her camera. On a daily basis Maya feels like she is living a double life; the expectations of her strict traditional parents directly contradict her life as a high school student. Maya feels the pull from so many different sides; school, relationships, the clothes she wears...it all usually comes back to the fact that she is straddling these two worlds.

Things get even more tricky when Maya finds out she has been accepted to NYU; her dream school. She knows that there is no way her parents will actually let her leave, they already made it very clear that she needs to go to school locally. Then there is the small factor of her parents trying to set up with a future husband, but Maya's heart belongs to Phil.

Everything comes to a head when there is a terrorist attack in Chicago, causing the Islamiphobia in her small suburban town to come out and rear it's nasty ugly head. Will Maya follow her heart and tell her parents what is going on in her world?

I really enjoyed this book. I loved getting pulled in to Maya's world and learning about what it's like to be an Indian Muslim American teen. Maya was complicated, but relatable, and her story is one that all teens need to read in this day and age. I highly recommend this book for all library collections.

This wasn't my favorite book, but it also wasn't my least favorite book. The plot was not my favorite, and it took me longer to get through it because of some of the boring parts. However, I did like the character and her qualities. This book is still a good read for anyone wanting new and interesting insight on the Muslim culture.

What I loved most about this book is the innocence of the characters. A traditional love story with a genuine young lady facing the cruelties of serious issues like racism and negotiating changing cultures. I believe it is important to see this world through the eyes of a modern Muslim and would certainly hope some of my students take time to explore the humanity of this very vibrant character. I loved the fact there were no devisive tactics used to shock and that the ending was not over simplified.

A sweet love story, a thoughtful Bildungsroman and an enjoyable read.

I absolutely adored this book, which was both a bit of a delightful surprise and the first step in laying a foundation of affection for everything that comes after this!

I was really looking forward to picking up Samira Ahmed's debut novel, Love, Hate & Other Filters because it featured a Muslim main character, took place in Illinois, and tackled Islamophobia. While I did like some aspects of the book and think it is worthwhile to read, I did have several issues with it.

Maya Aziz wants to go to film school and attend NYU to pursue her dreams of being a documentary filmmaker. She secretly applied to NYU and got accepted, but her parents think she will attend a local college. With her parents expectations combined with anti-Muslim backlash from a recent terror attack threatens to derail Maya's dream.
I have conflicting thoughts about Maya. I admire her tenacity and her ambitions of perusing a life that is not of a traditional Indian woman (i.e. going to the medical, engineering, law fields of study). I also respect her insistence of establishing her independence, however she has little to no pride of her Indian culture and blames almost everything she thinks she can’t have on her cultural constraints and on the fact that she’s different. There were many times where I pictured her as a petulant child who stomped her foot and yelled whenever she was refused something she wanted without giving any consideration to her parents' point of view. Her repetitive phrase of wanting to be "normal" got on my nerves because it implied being anything but a white, Christian girl is abnormal. I also found it very hard to believe that Maya never felt isolated being the only Indian American Muslim at her school.
While her Indian American identity is discussed or rather ranted about throughout the novel, there is little to no discussion of her Muslim identity. If it was not for the references of the Quran or going to the mosque made by her parents or her common Muslim last name of Aziz, the reader would not know of her Muslim identity. There is a moment in the book where Kareem, a potential love interest, drinks wine though it is forbidden in Islam to drink alcohol. It is laughed off that Kareem observes Islam in other aspects except this one really rubbed me the wrong way. I understand that author might be showing readers that people observe religion in their own ways, but this was a missed teaching moment. While Maya is not a religious person, a lot of the "constraints" she feels is closely tied to her religion. Her issues are very relevant to Muslim teens today and I wished they were talked about in the book. The author instead zeroes in on the romance aspect of the book, which fell totally apart for me. Phil, Maya's very bland love interest, and their drama took me out of the book. I kept waiting for something meaningful to happen. It is not until half way of the book that we see Maya being affected by Islamophobia in the book, both from the backlash of the terror attack and her parent's tighter restrictions.
I know that not every #ownvoices Muslim novel will not mirror my life and it is only an indication that we need more stories, but you can't write a book where religion is a central theme of the book and not talk about it. Personally, I felt very disappointed with the book and I understand why so many of my students returned the book without finishing it. I'm not saying Maya's story is unimportant, it is, but it barely skims the surface.

Islamophobia is so present in our society today that I find it important to have teen books with Muslim main characters that can give us their opinion on the issue and make us understand how they feel living in a world in which they are often seen as ‘‘other’’, ‘‘illegal’’ and even ‘‘terrorist’’.

This is then a story that matters. Maya, the seventeen-year-old Muslim-American heroine of this book, matters. Her voice is strong and her feelings are true. She sheds light where is needed and welcomes us, the reader, into her life with open arms. She is kind and patient, even when the world seems to be against her. She is important.

Now I can praise the author for discussing Islamophobia in a non-aggressive and effective manner all day, but unfortunately, we must also discuss the romance since it takes a lot of space in the story. This is understandable, seeing that Maya is seventeen—and most of us were thinking about love at that age as well. However, her juggling two boys—going after a boy that already has a girlfriend, while leading another one on—turned me off.

I can’t exactly blame Maya for letting herself fall in love with someone in a relationship, as she is young and the heart wants what it wants, but I was not charmed by the romance. Maya was, obviously, and I say good for her, but seeing her with the other boys really didn’t make me feel any particular way, except a tiny bit annoyed by the fact that she didn’t feel more remorseful about spending a considerate amount of time with a boy already in a relationship. The girl, who is in the dark about her boyfriend’s dates with Maya, deserves some respect, even if she’s not The One.

Mixed thoughts, mixed emotions. Honest and relevant, but not without flaws.

Summary: Maya Aziz is a seventeen-year-old Indian-American Muslim living in Chicago (shout-out to my hometown, yes!). On one hand, being a "good Muslim daughter," means that her parents would like her to attend college close to home and marry a suitable Muslim boy but Maya dreams for much more than that. She wants to attend film school in New York and pursue a creative career. As her senior year winds down and Maya seems to be getting all that she wants in love and more, a horrific attack on Springfield, Illinois, spawns a nasty sense of Islamophobia within Maya's community which, not only causes fear and hatred, but pushes Maya's parents into protection mode. In the end, Maya has some choices to make and much of the control is out of her hands.

My opinion: I enjoyed this book particularly because it reminded me loosely of "I'm Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter" (Erika L. Sanchez) and that one ranks amongst my top 5 favorite young adult books of all time. In fact, this one is similar except centered around an Indian-American Muslim teenager versus a Mexican-American teen.

Although I am not an Indian-American Muslim, I am able to relate to Maya because I understand the precarious balance of pleasing my parents and cultural identity while also pursuing my own dreams. When it comes down to it, our parents want the best for us, right? And, as teens, we don't always see that. But, when do they protect us TOO much? Will they EVER be able to let the reins loose? These are critical questions that Ahmed explores in this book.

On top of it, she adds another realistic layer--Islamophobia--which runs rampant and ever-existent in our country. The news has been riddled with shootings at schools, the YouTube building, etc. and whenever the shooter seems to be any shade of "brown," there is an automatic assignation of "terrorist" added on to the attack. But, when it's a "white" person, this is never the case. It's a sad, disgusting, and hate-filled situation in which we find ourselves and Ahmed shows how attacks like this can individually affect, in this case, the Indian-American Muslim community.

The romance didn't kill me because it was just the right amount for this book and it was appropriate for the story--nothing too forced.

Thank you, Samira Ahmed, for adding another book to the ever-growing DIVERSE young adult canon. Can't wait to recommend this one to my students.

This book definitely gives all the feels. It's also a timely book, and I look forward to recommending it to students.