Growing up is complicated when your own family is split and when you are living in a culture that doesn't always understand and respect your religious practices. She chooses to wear the headscarf and to cover her body. 'How come you have to hide your God-given body?' her father asks her. Yes, she's a teenager but she's a Muslim girl and she's struggling to figure out who she is and how she wants to belong to the world. She loves Flannery O'Connor stories because they're smart. Her parents divorced when she was twelve.

Except she knows a monster…one who happens to be parading around as a saint…Will she be the one to call him out on it? What will people in her tightknit Muslim community think of her then? She is trying to decide what kind of person she wants to be, and what it means to be a saint, a misfit, or a monster. While her heart might be leading her in one direction, her mind is spinning in others. Or won’t? Janna is still working all this out. Not that she would ever date him-Muslim girls don’t date. Or at least what a certain boy named Jeremy thinks. Janna Yusuf knows a lot of people can’t figure out what to make of her…an Arab Indian-American hijabi teenager who is a Flannery O’Connor obsessed book nerd, aspiring photographer, and sometime graphic novelist is not exactly easy to put into a box.Īnd Janna suddenly finds herself caring what people think. How much can you tell about a person just by looking at them? Saints and Misfits is an unforgettable debut novel that feels like a modern day My So-Called Life…starring a Muslim teen.

Saints and misfits review