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