Gr 9 Up—Alternating between the perspectives of Safiya, who is investigating hate crimes at her prep school and in
the local community, and Jawad, a missing Muslim public school student whose haunting voice tries to lead Safiya
to his body, Ahmed's gripping title shines a light on Islamophobia in society and the white supremacist radicalization
of teens online.

Powerful YA novel. Excellent book. ( )

Representation: Asian main characters, side Black characters
Trigger warnings: Bullying, racist and sexist slurs, white supremacy, death of a child and another loved one, kidnapping, grief, loss and blood depiction, car crash, near-death experience, antisemitism, imprisonment of children, physical injury, terrorism, emesis, xenophobia
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Well. I remember this book circling my recommendations for a while then I added it and not much time afterward I finally picked it up and read it. When I finished it I felt like there was a lot to unpack here and I must say the novel is well executed most of the time but it can sometimes get disjointed with all the multiple POVs though I do understand the need for that. Before the story starts there is a glossary of the terms the novel will use; in fact I never knew alternative facts existed but now I know. Now then. It starts with the main character Safiya Mirza or Safiya for short and off the bat she tells me she essentially goes to a school of woke-washing virtue signallers and also she's a journalist.

Here is the other significant part, there's another character who recycled some materials to make a jetpack for a makerspace program or something along those lines but his English teacher accused him of having a bomb which implies a racial bias according to Safiya. Well when I think about that it makes sense in a way but anyone could've done that, also people talk about races a lot here. He was arrested and suspended but later released and all that only took place within the opening pages, I know that seems like a fast-paced beginning, and it is though I must admit after that this is a much slower paced crime novel than what I'm used to. At least it picks up steam toward the end. Someone hacked Safiya's website and she deduces that based on the name Ghost Skin and those quotes from a fascist manifesto the culprit is a white nationalist/supremacist but I don't know who is that person. Later on the other character gets kidnapped and killed out of racism but here's the thing, the book told me there was a guy called Nate who after going on some extremist websites and channels he became a racist and since the killing is racially motivated he must've done it.

I spend the next 200 pages watching Safiya figure out who is the killer after seeing the body with some flashbacks and flashforwards from the other character interspersed, when I read this part I felt a little tension which built towards the last few pages. There was a plot twist I didn't see coming since there was another character called Richard who also had involvement in the killing (I never expected that considering I've never heard of this person up until that point) and Safiya's testimony that their race (white) and privilege didn't save them but somehow they got the nicest prison was chilling. One of them captained two sports teams and held a record. They had mansions. The revelation shocked everyone and some even denied this claim despite the evidence. Wow. At least she got a little solace when the jig was up. Still, she believes there's more work to do to ensure this never happens again.
P.S. Technically the novel is non-linear? It jumps from time to time sometimes.
P.P.S. It's slightly outdated since it mentions Twitter and not X but I can forgive that since it was set before the change. That cameo was a little amusing. ( )

RGG: Similar to Johnson's This Is My America, an engaging Muslim teenager investigates the disappearance of a 14-year-old Muslim boy, and discovers the hate and horror is too close. Safiya is a strong, courageous feminist. By the author of Internment.

This was one of the toughest books to finish. Not that it was boring, it was full of truth, impactful, to know that these kind of incidents happen on a daily basis. When I started to read a the book, I realized that the Bomb Boy story was similar to an incident in a town near where I live, where a boy built a clock and was wrongfully accused of building a bomb.The author does acknowledge this similarity in the afterward. this is a book that needs to be on every shelf. I will say I figured out the mystery half way through but that didn’t stop me from reading. This is a story that will stay with me for a long time. ( )