Saints and Misfits

S. K. Ali

Jun 2017 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

3 stars — I’m not in the best reading mood, but all things considered I was hoping for more from this book. If it hadn’t been a NetGalley, I probably would have DNF’d and moved on as it just wasn’t a match for me. The thing that disappointed me the most is that the characters felt like caricatures. There was no nuance to them, no subtlety. The writing felt that way too. Everything was just very flat and black and white. I was not a fan of Janna. In some ways it’s because she’s probably a bit more realistic teenagery, and so she came across very brat like. She was mean a lot of times, and I wonder if we were supposed to be noticing her reactions to her trauma, but it just wasn’t written well enough for that to come across. The things she said and did and thought about her loved ones (Tats, her brother, her mother, Mr. Ram), and even people who were kind (Nuah) made me really not like her. Even other people weren’t very nice (Sausun). I think the problem is that if we’d seen some of that nuance, there would be more underlying a lot of those actions/words. But as written, it wasn’t there. I found it hard to feel for Janna and all she was going through because of all her brattiness. Which is a shame, because what she was going through was huge and there was a big lesson there. It’s like this book had the bones of a really important book tackling really interesting subjects, but it failed to deliver. There were great things I learned about Islam in this book, and I loved seeing some different perspectives on things from an Islamic character/author POV. It helped me learn and grow. In particular, I enjoyed the perspectives surrounding women’s choice to go hijabi or niqabi, and how they have kind of made it their own — which is a very different perspective from the only one we see where it is not their choice. I also appreciated her Uncle trying to balance the conservative and liberal folks in his mosque — he amused me. But, as I do when I read strongly Christian books, I felt uncomfortable with the views on morality that stem from the religion. But that’s a me thing. I think it’s hard to read diversely religious books, particularly when you aren’t religious, b/c you always end up reading about people who judge the way you live your life. But it only cropped up in a few tiny areas, and in general it wasn’t outwardly judgemental, just how they choose to live *their* lives. It just rubs up against my own views in some areas, and it’s hard to set those aside and just read. Mr. Ram was cool, but I saw where that story was going from a mile away and kind of wish we’d seen more of their relationship…but maybe that’s the point for Janna. Occasionally the author chose to forego dialogue tags — like just “Muhammed” “Mom”, etc, instead of “Mom said”. Maybe that was a stylistic approach, but I personally wasn’t a fan. I listened to part of the story, and the narrator was okay. I don’t know how she would have been with different writing. Her delivery felt less nuanced, but when I switched to reading it myself, I don’t know how she could have read it differently. Her emotions were okay, her pacing was good. Her voices weren’t too diverse, but that can be a rare skill. So yeah, I was a bit bummed. When I requested it, I saw the old blurb, and I was more interested in it than in the current blurb. I probably wouldn’t have looked into it with the current blurb. *shrugs*

The book was OK. I really liked learning about others life styles and religion, so this was also a good learning experience for me to get a glimpse of what Islam religion is like. The ending was a little of a disappointment i was hoping for more, I did like how she faced her assaulter and was no felt guilty of what happened to her. I'd say that this is a good book to read when feeling bored.

I can see my nose.......

About the author

S. K. Ali is the author of Saints and Misfits, a finalist for the American Library Association’s 2018 William C. Morris Award and the winner of the APALA Honor Award and Middle East Book Honor Award; and Love from A to Z, a Today show Read with Jenna Book Club selection. Both novels were named best YA books of the year by various media including Entertainment Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. She is also the author of Misfit in Love and Love from Mecca to Medina. You can find Sajidah online at SKAliBooks.com and follow her on Instagram @SKAliBooks, TikTok @SKAliBooks, and on Twitter @SajidahWrites.