Starred Review Set shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Ahmed's novel presents a chilling depiction of America, in which U.S. citizens allow themselves to be controlled by prejudice and fear and succumb to the hateful rhetoric of a populist leader. Seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are among the Muslims rounded up and transported to Manzanar, an internment camp for Muslim American citizens. While most people quietly comply, Layla is determined to fight back for the freedom that is rightfully hers. Layla finds allies both inside and outside the camp, and before long, she herself is at the center of a rebellion against the despicable people in charge. This is a poignant, necessary story that paints a very real, very frank picture of hatred and ignorance, while also giving readers and marginalized individuals hope. It emphasizes that the oppressed have a voice and the power to speak up and fight back, while also reminding us that all citizens have the obligation, responsibility, and power to raise their voices and defend their fellow citizens from mistreatment or abuse. Though it might recall dystopian novels of the recent past, this carries so much more weight and is infinitely more terrifying, since its setting near-future U.S. uld very well exist today, tomorrow, or only a handful of years from now. This timely, important novel should spark many conversations about contemporary issues.

Layla was a regular American teenager until the new Islamophobic president enacted Exclusion Laws.Muslims are being rounded up, their books burned, and their bodies encoded with identification numbers. Neighbors are divided, and the government is going after resisters. Layla and her family are interned in the California desert along with thousands of other Muslim Americans, but she refuses to accept the circumstances of her detention, plotting to take down the system. She quickly learns that resistance is no joke: Two hijabi girls are beaten and dragged away screaming after standing up to the camp director. There are rumors of people being sent to black-op sites. Some guards seem sympathetic, but can they be trusted? Taking on Islamophobia and racism in a Trump-like America, Ahmed's (Love, Hate & Other Filters, 2018) magnetic, gripping narrative, written in a deeply humane and authentic tone, is attentive to the richness and complexity of the social ills at the heart of the book. Layla grows in consciousness as she begins to understand her struggle not as an individual accident of fate, but as part of an experience of oppression she shares with millions. This work asks the question many are too afraid to confront: What will happen if xenophobia and racism are allowed to fester and grow unabated?A reminder that even in a world filled with divisions and right-wing ideology, young people will rise up and demand equality for all. (Realistic fiction. 13-18)

In a near-future dystopian world, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin, a Muslim, is ripped from her home and sent to a desert camp by a racist, Islamophobic regime. Layla and others resist, but freedom may come at the cost of lives. The line between speculative fiction and contemporary realism has never been fuzzier than in this emotionally authentic, devastatingly intimate, startlingly concrete portrait of democratic impotence and governmental oppression.

Layla was a regular American teenager until the new Islamophobic president enacted Exclusion Laws.Muslims are being rounded up, their books burned, and their bodies encoded with identification numbers. Neighbors are divided, and the government is going after resisters. Layla and her family are interned in the California desert along with thousands of other Muslim Americans, but she refuses to accept the circumstances of her detention, plotting to take down the system. She quickly learns that resistance is no joke: Two hijabi girls are beaten and dragged away screaming after standing up to the camp director. There are rumors of people being sent to black-op sites. Some guards seem sympathetic, but can they be trusted? Taking on Islamophobia and racism in a Trump-like America, Ahmed's (Love, Hate & Other Filters, 2018) magnetic, gripping narrative, written in a deeply humane and authentic tone, is attentive to the richness and complexity of the social ills at the heart of the book. Layla grows in consciousness as she begins to understand her struggle not as an individual accident of fate, but as part of an experience of oppression she shares with millions. This work asks the question many are too afraid to confront: What will happen if xenophobia and racism are allowed to fester and grow unabated?A reminder that even in a world filled with divisions and right-wing ideology, young people will rise up and demand equality for all. (Realistic fiction. 13-18)

Ahmed (Love, Hate & Other Filters) sets her chilling novel in the very near future: two-and-a-half years after an election that brought about a Muslim ban, Exclusion laws, and the internment of Muslims in a disturbing echo of the Japanese internments of the 1940s. Layla Amin, the rebellious 17-year-old Muslim narrator, is enraged by the changes that her small liberal California community accepts: curfews, book burnings, required viewing of the U.S. president-s weekly National Security Address. On a personal level, she was suspended from school for kissing her non-Muslim boyfriend in public, and her poet-professor father has lost his job. Still, her family-s abrupt nighttime -relocation- to a camp-during which each arrival is branded with ultraviolet identification encoding-is a shock. While her parents shrink into compliance, Layla quickly makes friends and allies who band together to bring public attention to internees- treatment, close down the camps, and put an end to the country-s fascism and Islamophobia. Ahmed keeps the tension mounting as Layla faces increasingly violent consequences for her actions; the teenagers- relationships are depicted authentically, and their strength and resistance are inspiring. An unsettling and important book for our times. Ages 12-up. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary Agency. (Mar.)

Gr 8 Up-"Exclusion laws" imposed by an Islamophobic president have upended the lives of Muslims across the United States, including Layla's. Removed from school for her own good by her parents, Layla circumvents state-imposed curfews to see her boyfriend, David, who is Jewish. When she and her family and other Muslims are rounded up by the authorities and forced to live in an internment camp in the California desert, Layla learns what it means to surviveand to fight. This cautionary tale for our times draws parallels between the situation Muslim Americans face today and the horrors of the Japanese American internment.