Title: Internment

Author: Samira Ahmed

Genre: YA Contemporary

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: March 19, 2019

Links: Goodreads | Amazon* | Book Depository*

Rating: 5 / 5 Stars

Source: Physical ARC via publisher

 

I don’t know how I’m going to find the words to give this book the justice it deserves. You need to read it and you need to encourage everyone else to read it. Have you read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas? I just did a reread of that book and Internment seems like a very similar feel in that it moves you to DO SOMETHING.

This story is about Layla and her family. They live in a US that is just slightly different from ours. The author describes this as 15 minutes in the future and that resonates throughout the book. The government has used the most recent census answers to target Muslims, keeping an eye on them, finding reasons to fire them from long held jobs, kicking the children out of schools, and establishing a curfew. And as the story begins you can tell it is only seconds from getting worse. Soon Layla and her family, along with many other Muslims are forced to go live at an internment camp.

Of course on the surface the camp doesn’t seem that bad. Unless of course you think about the reasons they are there and the fact that they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Layla quickly makes friends with other teens in the camp who see the injustice and are willing to help Layla fight.

This story is moving and terrifying in the most important way. When the author says it is set 15 minutes in the future, you absolutely feel that. We are currently living in a US in which a story like this seems unfortunately close. If we allow small things to continue, it will only be a matter of time before awful things like locking humans in a prison for no other reason than their religion is happening.

Again, I know I don’t have the words to truly express how important and incredible this book is. Go and read it and pass it along.

Thank you SO MUCH to TheNovl for the opportunity to read and review this book!

“We accept the lies we tell each other and ourselves, I supposed. It’s one of the ways we are surviving the day-to-day without going mad.”

-Samira Ahmed, Internment

“When you’re a kid, you think your parents are invincible and all-knowing, and then you start to grow up and realize that they’re simply flawed human beings trying to make their way in the world the best they can.”

-Samira Ahmed, Internment

*Please note, this quote is from an ARC copy, so it may change in the final copy.

Synopsis: Rebellions are built on hope.

Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.

With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp’s Director and his guards.

Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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