The final part:)

Well, now when I’ve read the whole book, I would like to talk about the scene I liked the most. Since I like romantic things more than anything in this world, the part when Timothy talks to Jamilah and then kisses her is my favorite. This is the part when Timothy (“John”) and Jamilah meet each oher and solves everything out. When they show their feelings for the first time, not at Internet, but in real life. And when Timothy kisses Jamilah (yeah, not Jamie, Jamilah!) , and she gets so happy, the first kiss for the very first time, with the very right person…. It’s definitely the cutest moment in the whole book. She gets everything that she wanted, and even more. I think it’s a bit sad that they can’t be together (It would be the perfect “happily ever after”!), but I understand Jamilah and think that it is great that she fixed the relationship with her dad, and I understand that she does not want to ruin it.

But well, then we have this religious thing I don’t really understand. The thing about that Jamilah,, like many other Muslim girls, are not allowed to have boyfriends before they meet “the right one”. How do you know that this one is the right one, if you are barely aloud to talk to him/her? In what way should some moments of happiness, caused  by love, be bad for you or your reputation? I think that teenage love is something that gives us skills for being prepared for the problems that may appear in our life as an adult, and to take that away seems almost… rude, to me. I don’t want to judge anybody, I just wan’t to understand.

Well, I guess that’s all.

Take care,

Alexandra.

About Jamilah, John, the Goldfish and the coward inside of all of us.

“You need to know that there are more than ten things you should love about yourself”, John, Jamilahs email buddy writes to her. As Jamilahs life goes on, he becomes a more and more important person to her.  His role in the book grows bigger. He is the first one that she actually can open up to, rely on, and I think that it gives her strength. Maybe, that’s what gave her the courage to tell Peter that the “Goldfish”, Timothy, maybe is not such a bad guy anyway. But I still think that she is everything but brave, because she can’t even treat Timothy the way that he deserves, just because she is afraid of what Peter_The_Popular_Jerk will think about her! I mean, he turns out to be the first person in her real life, excluding John of course, who cares about her, (I knew from the beginning of the book that he would make some difference in her life, I was right, haha! ^^) and she can’t even run after him when walks away after that she has been mean to him? But maybe it would be unfair to judge her too hard, because I think that many of us recognizes this: there is a really nice person in the class, somebody that is not as fake as all the others, but you don’t dare to show your friendship at school because the cool ones that you desperately want to join has classified that person as a nerd. And nerdship is like a virus: if you are with a nerd, you will probably be automatically classified as a nerd too. And sadly, most people are unsecure enough to care about it.

 There is one more thing I find interesting about Jamilahs relationship with John: he, together with Amy, makes her realize that she is not the only one having problems at home. And maybe it’s good for her to see her life in wider perspective. Sometimes I think that it would be good to all of us.

So, I just have to say that I am really sorry that this might not be the most important things that you can talk about in the second part, but since I am really tired and forgot my book at school, this is probably the best I can do. I also apologize for the fact that there are lots of letters and not that much sense… Well, I have to quit now.

Take care <3

/Alexandra.

The beginning of the book and some thoughts about it. :)

The book begins with that Jamie overhears an argument between ethnics and Aussies, where the Australian guys Chris Ross and the popular Peter Clarkson, are saying racist comments to the Lebanese Ahmed. At the end of the discussion, when Ahmed gets too disgusted to continue and walks away, Peter turns to Jamie instead. He begins to flirt with her and to talk shit about immigrants. But when he does, he doesn’t know that Jamie is Jamilah, that her hair is not naturally blond and that she’s got a strict Arabic dad waiting for her at home.  But she just smiles and does not say anything, because she is scared to death that anybody will know the truth about her, and therefore be as mean to her as to Ahmed.

When we read this, we thought that the book would be about how hard it sometimes can be to just be yourself and about racism. We were absolutely right, but the book is also about self-confidence, the relationship between humans and, of course, mostly about how hard it is to Jamilah to pretend to be two persons at the same time. And even thought the last one might, in the reality, be more like a mission impossible because it’s way to complicated, the book is well-written enough to make the reading very interesting and entertaining.

Maybe, before we continue to write in this blog, it might be good to describe Jamilah a bit. She is nice and so on, but she is really a coward. She is very scared of being herself, so instead she puts a huge effort into being a practical nobody. Way too much one of the crowd. This is hard for her, and I think that it damages the already complicated relationship with her dad even more. Maybe, it would be easier to just take the shit from Peter? But she is just a regular unsecure girl, and the attention from the oh-so-popular Peter means much to her. So, will she manage to break this bad habit? Since this feels like a book with a happy ending, I think yes (can’t contact Zara right now, so I don’t know her opinion). But in what way? Continue to read our blog and you’ll get the answear!

Greetings from Alexandra (and Zara)  :) <3