Saints and Misfits: 10/23/17

Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali is a YA contemporary fiction about a muslim girl who lives with her mother and brother. The book opens with her swimming in Florida, waiting for the right moment to exit. She's swimming in a burkini and feels out of place because her father and step-mother are making a big deal over it.

Besides being teased by her family, she's also traumatized by a recent sexual assault by the mosque favorite, Farooq. He is the monster in the title. The saint is the woman she looks up to, her brother's fiancée, Sarah.

In the middle of all of that is a teenage girl of mixed muslim Egyptian and secular Indian. She's also American. She has a crush on a boy named Jeremy and doesn't even know how to work him into her life. She likes photography — and often does photography for the mosque.

So this novel is Janna finding herself, finding how to work together all the aspects of her life into something that is true to herself and her faith. Finally it's her coming to terms with the assault and finding the strength to tell what happened.

Four stars

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