I liked this, but had some struggles too (although not the "I didn't like the author's political stance in the last chapter" issue as many others have mentioned. It is a no-win situation). 

This had two timelines, two storylines. In the cover flap of the physical copy it has a little blurb "Two kids. One devastating day." and then mentions Brandon/September 11, 2001 in New York City and Reshmina/September 11, 2019 in Afghanistan.  In the Goodreads blurb, it mentions 2001 and "the present day" ... I guess you can say that the header "Right Here, Right Now" implies present day, and a few pages in Reshmina mentions in conversation "it's 2019" but I just felt like that shouldn't only be in the blurb, but included in the header, as it's such integral information.

The whole Table of Contents was lacking. Literally, in the physical book. It's a huge pet peeve of mine when publishers can't even give one page to give us the chapters and their page numbers. Instead, if attempting to look something up, having to leaf through the whole book. I had this book in all three formats, I was listening to the audio, and had the physical and kindle copy for reference. When I wanted to highlight something, make a note, there was no easy way to find my spot between formats. No chronological chapters, just a rotation between the two timelines. In the Kindle copy, we were given the POV & the header. In audio ... just the POV. So I unless I went back to the beginning of the chapter and listened to the header being spoken, or counted (it was the... 7th Reshmina chaper) it was pretty much impossible, and it shouldn't be! I guess this isn't a problem for a simple read through, but for any discussion, book club or movement between book/audio, it's absolutely an issue. Yes, I'm a TOC snob.

The switching between stories ... I didn't love it at the start. We'd be involved in one storyline, and then it would switch. We'd start getting into that storyline, and then it would switch again. Rather than just being a novelization of a survivor of the twin towers, it's more a comparative composition - showing some of the similarities of the the terrorist attack to war attacks. And there is another connection too (that little moment in the story when "ahhhhh" and yes, when the reveal came along later on).    

I can't remember where in the book (as mentioned, I couldn't find my spot from audio to text) but Reshmina seemed so wise beyond her 11 years, and in such a difficult position (to help, give refugee, even though it could cost her/her family/her village everything), her brother Pasoon ... were the boys so indoctrinated that they would betray/condemn their family, their whole village, to be part of the Taliban? 

The Author's Notes were NOT included in the audio, but I think there was a lot of important information there (just some clarification on what was real, what was changed, what was complete fiction). The author mentions "For the sake of story, I have combined a few events from different years in the War in Afghanistan into a single day" and I felt that on a smaller scale, just everything Reshmina went through in her single day (did we really need to have a snow leopard sighting, the Kochi, the poppy farmer, in addition to finding the downed American and having the Taliban and US attack?)  Everything Brandon went through felt a little more realistically possible even though I'm sure there a bunch of experiences were combined into his story (like they say an episode of ER has events that might happen over a couple months condensed to one night). 

There was SO much onomatopoeia ... pop-pop, pakoom, THOOM, pak pak pak, Ka-tung, SHOOM, ding, CRASH! chung! THWACK. THUNK. Nnnnnnn. flump. Whack! Chank! Krissh. screeeeech. shhhhhhh. fwoomp! poom. I don't know if it was more obvious (human narrator saying the words) in audio? They were often in all caps or italics in print though, so still set apart. I realize this is a YA book ... this made it feel very young. Although the content was hard (can't really talk about 9/11 "easily") ...

All 3rd person/past tense, but still two narrators for the two storylines (I think that was needed). The male narrator sounded like a man, spoke so fast. The female narrator sounded very young and spoke quite slowly. I had the regular speed up a bit, but it was a little too fast during Brandon's portions, but I didn't want to keep switching the speed, so I put up with it. The female narrator mispronounced cache (ca-shay). One thing I note, is if a character sings a bit of a song ... does the narrator speak it, or sing it? The male narrator sang (This Land is My Land), the female narrator spoke it (a couple different little song times). 

As this is YA, there was no profanity or sex. Still quite a bit of gruesome detail though.