Book Tour Review
Hope is Fireproof
I’m so excited to be a part of TBR Beyond Tours book tour of This Book Won’t Burn written by Samira Ahmed. It just came out on May 7 and as book lovers, you will NOT want to miss out on reading this powerful book.
If you’re against banning books, this book will make you mad, sad, happy, and hopeful. That basically sums up my feelings. My sister was an 8th and 9th grade English teacher for 40 years, and getting kids to read all kinds of books was a main focus. She bought books with her own money and set up a library of dozens and dozens (maybe even hundreds) of books in her classroom. She loaned books out to students and knew how to recommend just the right book to get a student interested in reading. I know that if she were still working at a school, hers would be the loudest voice of all.
Synopsis: After her dad abruptly abandons her family and her mom moves them from Chicago to a small rural town, Noor Khan is forced to start the last quarter of her senior year at a new school, away from everything & everyone she knows and loved. She plans to keep her head down and make it to graduation. But Noor discovers hundreds of books have been labeled “obscene” or “pornographic” and are being removed from the library in accordance with a new school board policy. Even worse, virtually all the banned books are by queer and BIPOC authors. Noor can’t sit back and do nothing, because that goes against everything she believes in, but challenging the status quo just might put a target on her back. Can she effect change by speaking up? Or will it be her downfall?
This book is well written and hard to put down. Yes, it’s a YA romance, but it’s also so much more. There are so many places where I yelled “yes!” & had a standing ovation in my mind. My book is full of sticky notes highlighting sentences and passages that I wanted to remember. One sentence of the book states, “My dad once told me that not everyone could muster moral courage – that’s partly why the silent majority exists.” I mean, Right?!
This book is about love, friendship, divorce, depression, fitting in and so much more. It’s hard to see the Noor and her sister go through these problems, but that’s life, right? Is this a perfect book? No. Is it geared toward a YA audience, sure. There are places where you have to suspend belief, but that happens to some extent in almost every fiction book. But when there are so many things that are right, I can overlook a few annoyances. Read this book. Then come back and tell me your thoughts!
I received a complimentary copy of this book from TBR Beyond Tours and Little, Brown, and Company. All opinions are my own.
Book Links:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198493806
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/This-Book-Wont-Samira-Ahmed/dp/0316547840/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/this-book-wont-burn-samira-ahmed/1144029930 IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/this-book-won-t-burn-samira-ahmed/20589530
About the Author:
Samira Ahmed is the bestselling author of Love, Hate & Other Filters, Internment, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, Hollow Fires, and the Amira & Hamza middle-grade duology, as well as a Ms. Marvel comic book mini-series. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including the New York Times, Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Vampires Never Get Old and A Universe of Wishes.
She was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in Batavia, Illinois, in a house that smelled like fried onions, spices, and potpourri. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Samira has taught high school English in both the suburbs of Chicago and New York City, worked in education non-profits, and spent time on the road for political campaigns.
Author Links:
Website: https://samiraahmed.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sam_aye_ahm
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sam_aye_ahm
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8345582
Tour Schedule:
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