I quite enjoyed this book but I felt like it could've gone without the flashbacks. I understand the point of them and the way their backgrounds played into the characters but I was more interested in what was going to or what did happen. I loved getting to see the interactions between a shooter and a practicing Muslim female principal who is American. It was just a fascinating story that I felt really could've had more focus.

This book is a tough one to read. Especially given the political climate we are in, and the horror Trump has brought to the office, this is a story that is both timely and unfortunately plausible.

This story was a lot different than I was expected based on the blurb. It turned out to be the story of a lost, young woman, who found herself through religion. Her family immigrated to the U.S. from Palestine, and her her siblings where born in the U.S. Her older sister disappears, and her family life falls apart. Her father turns to alcohol, and her mother suffers numerous mental-breakdowns. She, herself, feels so lost and alone until she finds her faith, which helps her get through the hardships in her life. Her and father find peace, and purpose in Islam, while her mother and brother pull away from them even further. She eventually ends up teaching at and all girls Muslim school in Chicago, where someone has opened fire on the students.

While we have a coming of age story/finding oneself story happening, there is also another, separate story we get bits and pieces of- an angry, hate-filled man that believes it's his duty to go to the Muslim school and shoot as many young girls as he can. We get a small glimpse into his life, and what fuels his rage, and what brought him to carry a rifle into a school to shoot children based on his misguided beliefs.

The story itself, is harrowing and the writing is very thoughtful.

There was however, something missing for me. The two stories didn't quite weave themselves together. I felt that I was reading two different books whenever the switch between past and present occurred. I also felt that the parts of the story that were happening in the present, where too few and far between. The chapters of the main character's past would be long and full of depth, then a chapter on the present (the school shooting) would occur, and would be so short, it didn't feel like part of the story as a whole.

<b>I think this is a very important story to tell, and one worth reading.</b> However, I do wish the two stories would have woven together better. I also felt like the story did a little of pushing religion as a means to finding oneself. While that is certainly true for many people, it's not the case for everyone. The main character and her father find peace through Islam, but her mother and brother that do not commit to religion, are portrayed as angry, lost and depressed for their entire lives.

Overall, I would give this story 3 stars. The writing is fantastic, and it's an important story to tell. A special thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC and wanting my honest opinion!!

Beautifully written, this book seamlessly moves backward and forward in time to tell the complex story of one Palestinian-American woman's efforts to create a life for herself and her family in a country whose ideal of equality and freedom of worship do not always match its reality. The opening scene of this novel is a school shooting at all-girl Muslim high school outside of Chicago. As Afaf hears the shooter progress through the school at which she is the principal, she remembers her painful childhood and her path to her faith. Through these recollections, the reader learns of her mother's mental illness, her father's retreat into alcoholism, her sister's disappearance, the bullying and bigotry she confronts on a daily basis at her high school and beyond, and her promiscuity in response to this painful childhood. These challenges she overcomes by finding her place within the Islamic community to which her father turned after a car accident that nearly took his life. Her embrace of Islam is a gradual process, and the author paints a complex picture of this process that defies the stereotypes so often embraced in this country about Islam and muslim women. It is her decision to wear the hijab, a sign of her commitment to the faith that she has chosen (a faith that her father also comes to embrace, but not her mother, brother, or sister). It is through her faith that she finds the strength to forgive her mother whose love she never felt as a child, and it is through her faith that she find the courage to confront the shooter.

A poignant indictment of the ongoing demonization of Muslims in this country and a powerful call to recognize our common humanity before it is too late -- this book should be a must-read for every American, as it is a much-needed reminder of the cruelties we perpetrate when we deny our common humanity by building walls between us according to religion, ethnicity, class, and race.

Thank you to Net Galley, the publisher, and the author for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Authentic depiction of a Muslim woman in America. A principle at a private school for Muslim girls, a gunman enters the school. The parts that follow alternate between her life story and her current situation. Detailed and well written.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

This was a book I had trouble putting down. Basically a story about a multi-generational Palestinian family living in the U,S., it portrayed the abuse and discrimination from their fellow Americans. The issue of the Muslim faith plays a huge role in the lives of the father and one daughter, thereby splintering the family. The book develops, going back and forth between the adult daughter, who is now a principal of a Muslim school, a shooter who threatens her, and the drama involving each family member. I highly recommend this excellent book.

Another book created complex, controversial feelings in my heart and my mind at the same time. I think I feel like I read two different books trapped in one book’s pages: One of them is taking a place at Nurrideen School for Girl’s brutal shooting and the other one is about a Palestinian American woman, Afaf’s life story from the beginning of her child, the struggles her family endured after her sister Nada’s disappearance which drifts family apart, turns the mother into a depressed woman suffering from real psychological problems and father becomes an alcoholic as Afaf and her brother lose themselves and learn to become adults without proper guidance of their parents.

I loved Afaf’s moving, powerful, poignant story. Her estrangement with her mother even though they live in the same house, her vulnerability to be heard, seen, listened, to feel something however it means to make out with white boys and use her body as her weapon to gain power over them.

She slowly loses her family, her identity, her connection with her native culture. She is outcast of her school, without any friends, any aim of life, turns into a ghost walking down the school corridors, listening to her friends’ verbal abuses. Then her father survives from a fatal car accident and he devotes himself to Islam and wants his daughter follow his footsteps. Afaf reluctantly attends the religious meetings with her father and she finally finds a community accepts who she is without prejudgment and humiliation. She makes friends and slowly discovers who she is and what she wants in her life.

I think I have to stop here and add my concern that in my opinion a Middle Eastern American girl’s only way to find her identity shouldn’t be only religion because identity shouldn’t be restricted by nationality, culture, race, gender or religion. I know we should find a community to express our strengths and we need real friends to walk with us at our life journey but I think Afaf’ s passion about books made me excited and I thought she would have chosen another way or found her own path differently instead of following her father’s sudden awakening after his deadly accident.

But family’s dramatic, poignant, riveting story and Afaf’s misery after losing her sister, her mother’s big loss of her favorite child and adaptation problems to live in a foreign land and her marital problems, betrayal, anxiety attacks she suffers from are the most interesting parts of the book. I wish we learn more about Nada’s disappearance story because the revelation part was a little haphazard and meaningless. I wanted to see more tears, more drama, more family secrets. I wanted to see something soul crushing, heart ripping, mind blowing.
But the fatalism of the book and the way how affects the people’s lives frustrated me.

And I also found the school shooting parts and a shooter’s reasoning to become Islamophobic was not credible enough for me. We learned his pieces of past story by going and back and forth between Afaf’s chronological life story and present shooting day. But Afaf’s meeting with the shooter and their dialogues are not powerful, educative, heart throbbing. They keep repeating itself and at the peak point you lose your interest and ask yourself: “What? This is it! Really?” and you get disappointed because you wait for something big, heart felting, life changing message, a real edgy and twisty conclusion that makes you question everything in your life! You want to read a powerful message about learning to adapt and respect our differences peacefully. School shootings and growing effects of Islamophobia after 9/11 terrorist attacks are two argumentative, controversial and crucial subjects which deserves an entire book to be to be told properly.
So I wish I could only read Afaf’s self-discovery story because when you put such a big, social, political, criminal elements, the entire book’s balance collapses and the story goes to the different directions and finishes with not so satisfying, sudden ending.
I give four stars to Afaf and her family’s story parts: four star

And I give the story-telling of school shooting parts: two stars

On average I’m giving three solid stars. It was mostly riveting, questioning, unconventional story with so much great potential and I know we have a brilliant author who may create heart wrenching, beautiful stories but I wish she didn’t try to tell too many things in a story. Sometimes simplicity, pureness and genuineness work better to create a better, remarkable novel that captivates our hearts and minds at the same time from the beginning to the end.

Special thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton Company for sharing this unique novel’s ARC COPY in exchange my honest review.

A terrific read a read that could of been torn from today’s headlines.A book of immigrants living life in America Anne a horrific act.A book Perf for bookclub discussions and one I will be recommending to my book friends,#netgalley#wwnortonbooks

A powerful debut novel! This book will help put you in the shoes of an immigrant and is an excellent exercise in empathy.

So many issues currently concerning so many readers are addressed in this wonderful and very relevant story. This author has much to say about the things we collectively care about and fear in 2020: school shootings, the dark corners of the Internet, the bitter ideological divisions in our country, and the struggles families face simply to survive are all here, thoughtfully explored with relatable characters and a brisk-paced, suspenseful storyline.

The book begins with what was supposed to be an ordinary day for Afaf Rahman, the principal of a Muslim school for girls in the Chicago suburbs. As she slips away for a private moment to pray, a school shooter breaks in and begins to kill her beloved students, slowly making his way to the closet where she is trapped, defenseless. From there, we are taken back in time to Afaf's tumultuous early life as the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. Mental illness of a parent, substance abuse in the family, relentless bigotry from the outside world, and the mysterious disappearance of her older sister are challenges that almost destroy Afaf, until she finds peace and a stable life path in Islam.

This book is beautifully written, and I came away from it with new regard for the power of forgiveness, the possibility for second chances, and a renewed appreciation for the gifts a life of faith holds for its followers. From a librarian's point of view, this is the ideal book to recommend to book clubs and other groups seeking a contemporary title worthy of discussion.

I have a feeling this will be a big hit when it releases in the spring. I absolutely adored every page of this book. The characters are relatable, well-rounded, and a delight to spend time with. The addition of the school shooting is heartbreaking and unfortunately quite timely. This is an important book and I can't wait to recommend it to everyone I know.