QOTD: What’s the last book you bought because you saw it on Instagram?
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Zara Hossain Is Here
Sabina Khan
#arcreview
Pub date: 4/6/21
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Zara is your typical American high school kid. Except according to a few she doesn’t belong because she’s Muslim from Pakistan. Her father is a well loved pediatrician and they have a great community around them.

After a series of events that starts with Zara helping someone from a racist boy she becomes the target. She has her locker graffitied then their house vandalized. This all results in a bigger event that somehow becomes trespassing. Ugh I hate the buddy buddiness of law enforcement, legal system, corporate America that perpetuates these peoples racist actions. Since when can’t you go to someones house to complain about their kid vandalizing your house? Well I’m white.. but I’m also scared of these types of white people. I don’t know what it’s like but I’m always here to dm or to walk with you.

I loved that Zara never gave up and kept trying to find a way to stay after their world started to crumble. The life that her parents built to make her life better.

They wanted to go back to Pakistan but she would have to live her life in private or else she would feel unsafe. Her parents are fully supportive of her relationship choices and her personal choices and even stand up for her against a family member.

In the end they find an option that would benefit them all but in the end it sucks that they had to change everything. Why didn’t Tyler’s father get a harsher punishment? I know the answer, its basically rhetorical but as a society it’s so upsetting.

And I can’t believe Sabina’s authors note that there was a clerical error so she had to leave. Who is running this horrible system?

I definitely recommend this book I loved the flow and the romance was sweet.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

I’ve been sick and when reading this I always wonder why they have to relearn to walk after being in bed for a few weeks. Well I was in bed for like 28 hrs and I am having trouble walking so I get it.

Thank you Scholastic Press and I Read YA for the gifted copy for my honest and voluntary review.

Synopsis:

Zara’s family has waited years for their visa process to be finalized so that they can officially become US citizens. But it only takes one moment for that dream to come crashing down around them.

Seventeen-year-old Pakistani immigrant, Zara Hossain, has been leading a fairly typical life in Corpus Christi, Texas, since her family moved there for her father to work as a pediatrician. While dealing with the Islamophobia that she faces at school, Zara has to lay low, trying not to stir up any trouble and jeopardize their family’s dependent visa status while they await their green card approval, which has been in process for almost nine years.

But one day her tormentor, star football player Tyler Benson, takes things too far, leaving a threatening note in her locker, and gets suspended. As an act of revenge against her for speaking out, Tyler and his friends vandalize Zara’s house with racist graffiti, leading to a violent crime that puts Zara’s entire future at risk. Now she must pay the ultimate price and choose between fighting to stay in the only place she’s ever called home or losing the life she loves and everyone in it.

From the author of the “heart-wrenching yet hopeful” (Samira Ahmed) novel, The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali, comes a timely, intimate look at what it means to be an immigrant in America today, and the endurance of hope and faith in the face of hate.