You Truly Assumed - Laila Sabreen

AUTHOR: Laila Sabreen

NARRATORS: Channie Waites, Tamika Katon-Donegal, and Lynette R. Freeman.

GENRE: Young Adult, Contemporary Drama.

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A YA story where three young Black Muslim American girls become part of an online journal that aims to shatter Islamophobia after a terrorist attack. YA readers will enjoy this work more than adults.

Story:

Sabriya is an Abington, Virginia resident, loves ballet, and is only of only two Black dancers at her advanced ballet class. She dreams of clearing an audition for a spot at the summer intensive in a ballet theatre.

Zakat is from Lullwood, Georgia. She is a senior at a local Islamic school and loves sketching. Her parents, both of whom are engineers, want her to opt for more traditional, secure career choices.

Farah is from Inglethorne, California and is interested in programming. Her boyfriend is leaving for college in the summer and she is wondering if their relationship will work long-distance. Plus, her mom wishes her to re-establish relations with her birth father, which Farah doesn’t want to as he had abandoned them and has his own family now.

When there is a bombing at a metro station in Washington, the plans of these three teenagers are throw haywire. And when the suspect is assumed to be Muslim, things become even worse. Sabriya turns to online journaling for comfort. How this journal becomes a whole new movement, and how Zakat and Farah join her on this journey forms the rest of the story.

The story comes to us in the first person perspectives of the three teenagers.

There are YA books that speak perfectly only to their target age group, and there are YA books that transcend age barriers and speak to every reader. This book falls firmly in the first category. While it does its job remarkably well for a debut novel, it doesn’t go much beyond tropes. As an adult reader, I found the content generating a sense of déjà vu. But maybe the YA reader segment won’t feel the same.

The usual YA teen tropes that appear in this novel are romantic relationship issues, family issues, friendship problems, educational pressure and expectations, underdogs becoming self-confident, and over-the-top and perfect outcomes at the end. The inclusivity-related topics that appear in this novel are racism against Blacks, Islamophobia, gender discrimination, white supremacist attitudes, online harassment of minorities, and problems of inter-faith families. As the three main characters come from a variety of familial and social backgrounds, all these issues get distributed across the three of them pretty fairly.

The three characters have a distinct and equal role to play in the proceedings. I liked how the girls aren’t portrayed as weak or naïve, rather as using their skills and intelligence to make a change. The writing balances between their personal struggles and their combined efforts at making the online blog a success. At the same time, their success does seem sudden and exaggerated. We get to hear of numbers and responses but we get a limited view of the actual blog content. Perhaps a little more attention to the feelings expressed in the blog rather than only dwelling on its hashtag #YouTrulyAssumed would have created a greater connect. I am not a Muslim so I have no idea about the accuracy of the depiction of the Islamic faith and its followers, but it felt comprehensive and precise.

All in all, I found the book pretty decent and it would be a 3 star read for me – I liked it enough without its creating a long-term impact on me. But as the target reader would be a much younger person who is bound to find the characters more relatable than I did, I will rate it a bit higher. It’s a story that makes its way through hate and shows the power of love and unity. Definitely recommended to YA readers.

The audiobook, clocking at almost 10 hours, is narrated by Channie Waites, Tamika Katon-Donegal, and Lynette R. Freeman, each voicing one of the girls. They are pretty good and I found no flaws in their performance. Their voices sounded age-appropriate for the characters. The book is not character-intensive or with too complicated twists. As such, the audiobook is definitely a good option to try.

My thanks to RB Media, Recorded Books, and NetGalley for the ALC of “You Truly Assumed”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.