This was a fun follow up to Perfectly Parvin! I liked seeing more of the characters from the first book here in the second one. I also liked watching Azar grow throughout the book.

This was only an okay read for me. I thought it was a cute story, and I enjoyed the passion of the MC, but I don´t think I will remember much of it in a couple of month´s time. Sorry.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me an ARC!
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Unfortunately I DNFed this, it just didn’t catch my attention and maybe I’ll get into it again when I’m in the perfect headspace to give this another try! But I would buy and recommend this to others definitely!

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

This was a really cute and comforting coming-of-age story. I enjoyed following the main character even as she is someone one would deem quite flawed. She is still likable in that she has drive and passions. The romance was so cute too! And of course I’m a sucker for great found family.

Azar On Fire by Olivia Abtahi is a contemporary young adult book about a girl who forms a band and transforms her life. This book is a companion to Perfectly Parvin. Azar has these nodes on her throat and can't sing or talk very loud. She has to be very careful with her voice. Because of this, she's held herself away from her classmates and really only has one friend, her cousin. However, one day Azar gets in trouble with the school to the tune of $1000 worth of damage. To try and make amends and raise the money, she is given the option by the principal of forming a band. Azar who loves music is hesitant, but takes the opportunity. Recruiting students from different social standings, Azar starts her band, and well, her life.

I enjoyed Azar On Fire. This book is both lighthearted and heart felt. It is a lot of fun -- loved the band coming together and the different lessons Azar learned. There's a diverse set of characters. Also, there are serious moments too. The audiobook is narrated by Alex McKenna who does a superb job with this story. This audiobook is 9 hours and 13 minutes but goes by fast. I never once felt lost like I didn't know what was going on. In fact, I was invested the whole time in this book. I look forward to listening to any other book Olivia Abtahi comes out with because I know I am going to have a great time.

What a stunning debut! The Iranian Argentinian rep, demisexual rep, and disability rep were incredibly done. Azah is a captivating and entertaining main character and her struggles and successes were encouraging to read about. The greater cast of characters were also a perfect supplement to round out the whole story and make the narrative come to life.

Azar on Fire was a great read and felt almost like watching a movie during the story. The plot was fun and the character's passion leaps off the pages.

thank you PRH International for sending me an EARC of this book!

5 STARS!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book kind of breaks the distance between middle grade and ya, since it has a very middle grade-y feel but in a great way. I don’t really read middle grade often, but this book was simply delightful (and that is not a word i use often, or lightly).

This book had everything. First off, I had no clue there was chronic illness/disability rep, but it was a constant through the book and it felt so incredibly well done. AND a demisexual main character? Yeah this hit all the boxes for me 😭🫶🏻

The characters felt REAL and GENUINE and were often incredibly relatable. Was the mc frustrating at times? well YEAH she is 14, of course she made decisions or had thoughts that frustrated me because she’s YOUNG AND LEARNING. However she was nothing if not incredible and someone I could relate to and her struggles felt simply SO REAL TO ME. There were also so many important convos here, it was all just so beautifully done.

This book feels important for kids, young teens, and young adults to read and cherish. I feel incredibly special for having the incredible chance to read it 🫶🏻

Thank you to netgalley for my advanced reader copy of this book!

I did not read Perfectly Parvin before jumping into this one, but I didn’t feel like I missed anything.

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s not middle grade so I’d just consider it really early YA. The main character, Azar, is 14. She has some voice health issues that she undergoes surgery and doctors visits for in the book and I thought this was a really interesting and realistic health condition to include in her character.

Things I enjoyed:
- watching Azar make friends
- The creation of Azar’s band
- the cute little romance between Azar and Eben
- Azar’s relationship with her parents

Oh I also liked that Azar and her cousin kind of explore her sexuality and come to the conclusion she might be/probably is demisexual and they define it? I thought this was handled well and mature fore their age.

I really felt like I watched her grow in the course of the novel. It was a cute and quick read overall and I enjoyed it despite it being a younger YA.

I absolutely enjoyed this book! I loved the overall plot with Azar trying to get the band together, it gave me some good movie vibes, and I really enjoyed the demisexuality and the overall discussion of music. I feel like music really brings people together, and this book accomplished that!

3.75

This book sort of bridges the gap between YA and middle grade. Azar is 14, and while technically a high schooler, therefore making this YA, she’s so young that the book often reads much more like a middle grade novel. This is neither a good or bad thing, simply something you may want to be aware of before you pick up the book.
This was cute! Azar was a spunky narrator. The cast of friends were diverse and personable. The disability rep was phenomenal. But let’s dive in a little bit deeper, shall we?

Azar on Fire follows 14 year old Azar Rossi, a music loving teen with vocal damage due to severe colic as a baby. When she accidentally damages $1000 worth of school property, her principal gives her an ultimatum—pay the school back, or join the battle of the bands.
Since Azar can’t afford to pay the school back, she must gather a band and enter the competition. Being a performer may be her dream, but being in a band is a lot harder than Azar expected.

The representation in this book is amazing. Azar is both disabled and multiracial (Argentinian, Iranian, and Italian). I believe both of those experiences are #ownvoices, though I’m not sure in the case of the disability rep. The raw and knowledgeable way in which it was written led me to believe that it must have been written by someone who experienced these things, and though there is no author’s note, Olivia Abtahi mentions her ENT doctor in the acknowledgments.
Azar is also demisexual, which we learn through an interaction between her and her cousin Roya. To me, this scene felt really random and out of place. It was never hinted at or mentioned before this, nor was it mentioned again. It was one throw-away scene in the middle of the book that sort of came out of nowhere. Now, I am demi, and I appreciate the rep, but I wish it had been even just a little bit more pervasive throughout the story. The way it felt so awkwardly plugged into the story cheapened the representation for me.
The larger cast of characters is similarly diverse. Roya, Azar’s cousin and best friend, is Iranian. Her bandmates are also all POC, except for Eben, the lead singer and love interest, who is the only cishet white person in the main cast. Matty, the guitarist, is Argentinian and gay, and Nadim, the bassist is an Arab exchange student (I don’t remember the specific country he is from).

The plot and pacing of the book were fine. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I was never super engaged, nor did I ever have the desire to DNF the book. There were a lot of throwaway scenes and things that happened in the book that I thought would become recurring themes later on, but didn’t. They added nothing to the book or the story, and just kind of felt… weirdly inserted. Azar’s demisexuality is one example of this. Another is Azar’s visit to Eben’s house where she learns his mom is a famous internet blogger who posts about him a ton on the internet for views (sometimes in a way that is exploitative and a violation of his privacy). That made me go <i>what?</i> It was completely out of left field and didn’t mesh with who Eben is as a person. He and Azar never addressed it in conversation. It never comes up again. It was a whole thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about for the rest of the book, waiting for it to become relevant again, only for that to never happen.

Azar goes through some serious character growth throughout the book, and unlike some other aspects of the story, those threads are never lost. One of the reasons I say this book reads a lot like a MG novel is because this character growth, and the accompanying morals, are very heavy handed. We are blatantly told and shown that Azar needs to work on team work. She’s a little bit of a control-freak (relateable lol), and she feels personally attacked every time the band doesn’t want to do exactly what she says or wants. This did get kind of annoying at times, because of how often it was repeatedly shoved down the reader’s throats, and because the way it was written felt very much like a lesson being taught. Which felt very middle grade, to me, for a YA novel. Middle grade books can sometimes have a very strong teaching moral woven in, whereas books for older readers (YA, adult) often have themes that are more subversively present that the reader is expected to take away without having it shoved in their face.
I think that Azar’s growth in accepting herself and her disability was done much more artfully. She steadily and gradually began to accept herself throughout the book, culminating in her realizing she doesn’t need to have fully functional vical cordsin order to play her music and be happy with herself. Unlike the “teamwork is important!” aspect of her character growth, this felt much more natural within the story, and I really enjoyed watching her grow.

This book is definitely worth the read, and I would love to see a true middle grade book from this author someday! I think she’d excel at it.

Olivia Abtahi's sophomore release, Azar on Fire, was another fun and adorable read. This Young adult contemporary with subtle romance vibes is perfect for lovers of music, and specifically Battle of the Bands. I really enjoyed the blending of multiple cultures, including Iranian culture, which speaks to me directly. This book was a quick read, light-hearted, fun and funny. It will keep the reader smiling all the way through. It was the perfect continuation of the Perfectly Parvin universe.

**Thank you to Penguin Teen and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for this review. This in no way changed my rating**

I really enjoyed this! Azar is a great character and is very relatable. I was worried at first when it said she was 14, because often, teens on the lower end are written in a way where they're whiny or sound younger than they are. Azar was a fun narrator and written about age level, if not slightly older. I also liked that we had a character who was mixed race where the focus wasn't on her being mixed race. It's nice to just exist sometimes. I think she'll be good rep, nonetheless, as all aspects of her family background are represented at some point. I also think the disability rep was handled with care. Azar has a vocal condition after being a very colicky baby that has left it difficult for her to talk, prone to infections, and in need of a surgery. Abtahi did a nice job explaining the condition without ever making it feel like it *defines* Azar or like it makes her "abnormal", which can happen when the author didn't take care. You can tell Abtahi was sensitive in how she portrayed Azar.

I also want to note that while this is the second in a series, it's a stand-alone. I have not read Perfectly Parvin and I was able to understand the story nonetheless. You don't need to read one to understand the other.

All in all, a great book that I can't wait to recommend to readers at the library!

AZAR ON FIRE by Olivia Abtahi is an interesting story and Azar is a compelling character. It's impossible *not* to feel for her in that very bad, no good day that results in her competing in Battle of the Bands. (The details leading to this shouldn't be spoiled because they are wonderfully cringe-inducing.) Following Azar on this journey of growth feels like a perfect story for advanced 7th/8th grade readers as Azar is a character so very rarely shown on the page (I had no idea of what damage colic can do to vocal chords) and the novel is a good example of a character making choices that impact their own growth, even when they are trying to resist it.

4/5 stars. This book is following a girl names Azar who suffers from vocal damage dude to colic as a baby, but all she wants to do is sing and be a musician. Lucky, unlucky for Azar she finds herself owing her school $1000 and being blackmailed into competing in the Battle of the Bands, something she’s always wanted to do. So a girl who doesn’t say many words at school must recruit 3 other members of a band. I really enjoyed learning more about the condition because I had no idea that was a thing. Watching Azar grow from this not only quiet girl but also closed off to and opening flower was very rewarding. Also representation for some LGBTQIA

A quick, engaging read. Abtahi can take a character so unlike me on the surface and make me able to relate and see myself on a deeper level. The Iranian-Spanish-Italian-American narrative is fresh, interesting and appreciated. Well done on novel #2!

I thought this was a very quick, easy, and fun read. Though I liked it, I felt that there was something missing. It seemed a little flat to me at times. I think it's still worth the read though because it was still entertaining and the representation is great. The main character is Iranian, has a chronic illness, and is demisexual. I loved all that rep in one character, but I did feel as if the demisexual part of Azar's identity could have been developed a bit more. I felt as if Azar and Eben's relationship was a bit forced. I felt like they didn't have enough meaningful interactions, besides the fact that he is the first person outside her family that she became friends with and talked to at all, for her to develop a crush. I know that every demisexual's experience is different so this could have been enough emotional connection of Azar's character, especially given her lack of social interactions. So that being said, even though the development of her relationship felt a bit off to me, I still appreciated the demisexual representation that I rarely see in books.
This is a sequel to another book but It can be read as a standalone. I hadn't read the first book before reading this because I didn't realize it was a sequel at first but that didn't hinder me from understanding anything that went on. I do know that the main character of the first book was Parvin and she is mentioned in the book but only for a couple of sentences that didn't have any real consequences to the plot.
Overall, I think this is worth the read if you're looking for a quick and easy read with lots of different types of representation.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I honestly adored this book. While at times I found Azar to be a frustrating character, it also was realistic in the ways a young girl would react to things so I liked that. All the characters were interesting and likeable! I was rooting for them the entire time and there were a lot of moments that made me emotional, which is always something I like. Overall, this was a really enjoyable and fun read that wasn’t like any books I’ve read, storyline wise. I would definitely recommend

A wonderful, diverse and immersive story with a super creative premise and great writing to carry it though. Lovely and well done!