What do I even say? That though "just" a young adult novel, this story and main character Layla did a ridiculous job shredding my heart?? Well it did, and this book sure isn't "just" anything. Several YA tropes are included throughout- the hyped up emotions etc.- but if you and your family were forced from your homes in the middle of the night and stripped of your freedom and everything you knew, to be placed into, essentially, a prison camp, wouldn't you feel pretty emotional?! I applaud Ahmed for taking on such a hot subject and smartly pointing out the US' history of using internment camps to strip Japanese American citizens of their rights during wartime to draw parallels to how easily our present administration could go to the same extremes.

I read her Author's Note at the end before I began and I was already in tears. Just 20 or so pages into this fiction (and I had to keep reminding myself over and over that it is fiction, that we haven't subjected Muslim Americans to this exact treatment YET and I hope against hope that we NEVER WILL) I was crying again, worrying for Layla, her family, and her boyfriend David, who didn't know that she was taken away by the Exclusion guards. The caravan of Muslim citizens were taken through the desert- very near Manzanar, a former internment camp- to a new facility, set to be the first of many like it across the country to lock up those who, in the eyes of the president and the new Secretary of War, make up the most dangerous threat to America.

My stomach roiled as everyone was split up into subsets based on ethnicities to try to build tension to pit internees against one another instead of against the guards or the camp director, who claims again and again that he IS the law in the camp, and that he WILL be obeyed despite the youths' attempts to rebel. Layla skeptically befriends one of the soldiers, Jake, who assures her that she is not alone and that he is not even the only white person with power inside the camp begrudgingly holding up the status quo until they have enough to sink the entire camp for good. Jake helps Layla to keep in touch with David who is willing to put the ties with his family and his own life on the line for the cause to free the Americans within the camp despite the bigotry that is running the country.

This was NOT an easy read by any stretch and several breaks were required throughout, but I was so so glad I pushed through. This broke me, but it such an important read, as a warning to what could come if we stop calling out hate or don't stand up for our friends and neighbors.