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Saints and Misfits

by S. K. Ali

Belonging, faith, and a hidden threat

Regular price $13.38 USD
Regular price $22.30 USD Sale price $13.38 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

Belonging, faith, and a hidden threat

A Muslim teenager sorts the people around her into saints, misfits, and monsters—and finds that outward holiness can conceal danger. The book connects that unsettling discovery at her mosque with her own sense of not belonging across two family households, while her relationship with Jeremy complicates the categories she uses to understand her world. Social exclusion, family change, faith, and sexual abuse shape this young adult novel’s central concerns.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teens and young adults interested in stories about belonging and family change.
  • Readers seeking young adult fiction that addresses sexual abuse in a Muslim community context.

Themes

Belonging and misfit identityFamily changeFaith and perceived holinessSexual abuse and concealed harm

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Saints and Misfits--a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of the Year--is a "timely and authentic" (School Library Journal, starred review) debut novel that feels like a modern day My So-Called Life...starring a Muslim teen.

There are three kinds of people in my world:

1. Saints, those special people moving the world forward. Sometimes you glaze over them. Or, at least, I do. They're in your face so much, you can't see them, like how you can't see your nose.

2. Misfits, people who don't belong. Like me--the way I don't fit into Dad's brand-new family or in the leftover one composed of Mom and my older brother, Mama's-Boy-Muhammad.

Also, there's Jeremy and me. Misfits. Because although, alliteratively speaking, Janna and Jeremy sound good together, we don't go together. Same planet, different worlds.

But sometimes worlds collide and beautiful things happen, right?

3. Monsters. Well, monsters wearing saint masks, like in Flannery O'Connor's stories.

Like the monster at my mosque.

People think he's holy, untouchable, but nobody has seen under the mask.

Except me.
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