"A terrifying, futuristic United Sates where Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps, and seventeen-year-old Layla Amin must lead a revolution against complicit silence"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

Set in a futuristic United Sates where Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps, and Layla Amin must lead a revolution against complicit silence. - (Baker & Taylor)

Forced into an interment camp for Muslim-American citizens in a near-future United States, 17-year-old Layla Amin helps forge an alliance of new friends and outside sympathizers before becoming the leader of a revolution against the camp's corrupt guards. 75,000 first printing. Simultaneous eBook. - (Baker & Taylor)

Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling author of Love, Hate, & Other Filters, Internment and Hollow Fires. She was born in Bombay, India, and has lived in New York, Chicago, and Kauai, where she spent a year searching for the perfect mango. She currently resides in the Midwest. Find her online at samiraahmed.com and on Twitter and Instagram @sam_aye_ahm. - (Grand Central Pub)

Booklist Reviews

*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—a near-future U.S.—could very well exist today, tomorrow, or only a handful of years from now. This timely, important novel should spark many conversations about contemporary issues. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Horn Book Guide Reviews

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. Copyright 2019 Horn Book Guide Reviews.

Horn Book Magazine Reviews

Xenophobic fear-mongering, book burnings, terrified families rounded up in the middle of the night to be thrown into internment camps—all painfully familiar elements of America's past and present—descend upon Layla Amin's near-future dystopian world like a drizzle that steadily becomes a torrent. Seventeen-year-old Layla watches as a racist and Islamophobic president emboldens a hateful regime that considers all Muslims to be threats. Ripped from her home and sent to a desert camp, Layla resists the appalling injustice, refusing to accept terror and imprisonment as "normal." And she is not alone: other teens and even a few guards join Layla in plans to expose the camp and attain their freedom. But with fellow Muslims being beaten or disappearing to black-ops sites and a sadistic camp director prepared to destroy the resistance by any means, freedom may come at the cost of lives. The line between speculative fiction and contemporary realism has never been fuzzier, and Ahmed doesn't so much balance on it as erase it, in an emotionally authentic, devastatingly intimate, and startlingly concrete portrait of democratic impotence, governmental oppression, and the mechanics that keep them in place. anastasia m. Collins March/April 2019 p 74 Copyright 2019 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

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 t he 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) Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

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.)

School Library Journal Reviews

Gr 8 Up–In a world disturbingly similar to our own, the president of the United States incites hate, sending Muslim Americans to a prison camp in the California desert, near Manzanar, where those of Japanese descent were incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. Seventeen-year-old Layla burns with anger—at the malevolent Director, who runs the camp; at the complicit Muslim American "minders" who work for the camp; and at those who let these injustices happen. Though Layla's parents worry about her, she is compelled to shut down the camp, with the help of fellow prisoners; her boyfriend, David, who's on the outside; and a seemingly sympathetic guard. As in Ahmed's debut, Love, Hate and Other Filters, a teen grapples with both typical adolescent concerns and burdens that weigh heavily. Layla wonders if putting her family in danger is worth taking a stand. Though this tense novel brims with action, it also gives Layla, and readers, space to contemplate questions like this. She darkly notes that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, yet she also realizes that "forgetting is in the American grain." Teens who finish Ahmed's captivating work won't soon overlook the ugly truths stamped into our nation's history. VERDICT Sensitive and stirring. For all collections.—Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal

School Library Journal Reviews

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 survive—and 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.