Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

Maya Aziz is a teen you wish you had met sooner. A voice and a story that desperately deserves to be heard and deeply matters.

Love, Hate & Other Filters, follows the life of a 17 year old Muslim American girl, lost and trapped in the many intersections of her life. On one hand she is expected to be a “good Indian daughter”, a life comprising of college close to home and a suitable Muslim boy, given the golden stamp of approval by her mother of course. But then there's the life she's always wanted, a life of living in New York and pursuing her dreams of film school. Oh and perhaps also, just maybe having a chance with a boy she's always known and liked from afar. But then again these are all nothing but dreams, and dream all she like, for her life is about to turn into just the opposite.

Maya's world is shattered and upturned when a terrorist attack strikes a nearby city, the main suspect sharing not only her religion but her last name too. Her community and the people around her become distorted and blurred, her family living in an unwakeable nightmare of hate, discrimination and islamophobia.

This heartbreakingly honest account of what it means to grow up Muslim in modern America, is much needed and incredibly raw yet beautiful.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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The book Escape From Aleppo by N.H Senzai is about a girl named Nadia who is escaping from the war in Aleppo. On the way she looses her family and has to find them. During this time she meets new people that help her on her journey.        

I give the book Escape From Aleppo, a 10 out of 10. I think this is because whenever I was reading the story I was always engaged. The reasons why I felt engaged was because the writing in the book was so colourful. For example the vocabulary that the author used, like the clatter of running feet, or, she held a sputtering candle. This word choice was very descriptive and really made the story come alive for me.

Another thing I liked about the story is the characters. I liked the characters because they were all different in their own way but at the same time they were all similar.

For instance Nadia is a tough cookie, what I mean by that is that no matter how hard things get for her she always has a positive attitude. Another character is Basel. The thing I liked about Basel was that he would always face the facts. For example he faced the fact that he knew that it was not going to get better Aleppo and moved on from that.

I hope that reading my review will make you want to read the adventurous book called Escape from Aleppo.

Reviewed by Nina (Aged 11)

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The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta by Kushanava Choudhury

The Epic City is a winding twisting rickshaw ride through the heart and soul of Calcutta. A city of 15 million dreamers and filmmakers and poets and musicians and of course by far the most important; chaiwallas, for how would the city ever fully function without their steaming hot cups of cardamom and ginger spiced milky chai? A city fuelled on endless cups of tea, street food stalls, roadside sweet shops, and neverending adda: the Bengali word for chats.

In this confusing, chaotic and cheerful love letter, Kushanava Choudhury reconnects with his roots and moves back to the city his immigrant parents long since left behind, uncovering the drowned out voices and stories that never quite make the paper. You will find yourself squeezing through hidden allies, to breathing in bustling bazaars. Each as full of life and laughter. Tram rides and lazy afternoon strides, powered on contempt bellies of fish curry and rice, will lead you to the concealed corners and crooks that make everyday Calcutta life.

The Epic City is a book that will leave you with an electric urge to travel and explore. Whether that means getting lost in a brand new city, or simply absorbing the nuances of your neighbourhood.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Stunning, lyrical, haunting. Characters that will tangle into your thoughts and mingle with your mind for days. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a searingly honest and devastating road novel, that centres around an African American family living in rural Mississippi. This story is guaranteed to make your heart speed way over the limit, and run a few redlights too while you're at it, because honestly I could not bring myself to pull the brakes and put this book down.

In this powerful tale of family, love, poverty, grief, and race, Wards chilling writing trembles with pain for the characters we wish to save and pull right off the pages straight into our arms. Jojo, a thirteen year old, learning what it means to be a man from his grandfather, and parenting his three year old sister Kayla, because if not him then who? Surely not his mother Leonie, absent and selfish and unable to put her children above her own needs. Not his father Michael, locked up in prison, and whose family are disgusted by his black girlfriend and biracial kids. The only two people Jojo can fully rely on his being his loving grandparents, Mam and Pop, everyone else, ghosts to him, sometimes there, sometimes not, always haunting.

When Leonie packs the two kids and a friend into the car, and sets off on a journey to retrieve the one thing that hasn't entirely slipped out from her hands; Michael, Jojo begins to understand the racism and hatred of the south, and comes to terms with everything his mother is, isn't and never  will be.

Profound, poetic, and an important reminder that the shadows and skeletons of slavery are still very much alive and present in twenty-first-century America.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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