Maya is an Muslim, Indian American teen with big ambitions-- that her parents don't know about. Graduation is creeping up, and soon she'll have to decide to stay in the midwest and become the girl her parents want her to be or to break the mold and head to NYC on her own. In the midst of her future-planning comes possible romances (both parental approved and not) including a meet-cute scenario that made me squeal.

But this book is about more than personal identity and choices-- it's about how society forces identities upon Muslim and Indian girls and how easily those choices can be revoked. Without giving away too much, there's a secondary plot line with snippets of text that the reader must puzzle together.

Loved Maya's perspective, wit, and all of the Thoreau references. Some of the pacing in the second half of the novel through me a bit, but over all, would recommend!

Maya Aziz is torn between being the typical American high school senior and being the traditional Indian girl her parents wish for her to be. Maya’s parents emigrated to the U.S. with dreams -- dreams that included for their daughter to have a future as a successful lawyer with a Muslim husband. But Maya’s dreams are not her parents dreams. She loves to make movies and has a crush on the star football player. She is beyond excited yet also scared that she's been accepted to NYU with a note saying they think her films "show promise", and the star football player just might be interested in her, too. As Maya frets over decisions that will shape her future, a terrorist attack at the state capital threatens to take it all away from her. In the aftermath, Maya and her family must learn how to compromise their dreams with our nation’s reality. THOUGHTS: In sharing the story of 18-year-old Maya, born in America to parents that emigrated from India to a small Illinois town, Samira Ahmed has captured what it means to be anyone who is of Middle Eastern descent in the United States. Ignorance and false information continues to feed racism in our country. There are far too many Americans who conveniently forget that, unless they are American Indian, we ALL come from a long line of immigrants who were given a chance to build their own version of the American dream. Ahmed also turns the spotlight on the issue of fear and anger stemming from the refusal to accept others as they are, particularly when the actions of one cast a suspicious net on others, and especially when religion is involved. Oftentimes, people act out of ignorance and anger, not considering the lasting effects on all those around them. The addition of an anonymous secondary narrator will make readers question their own preconceptions as the story weaves to its conclusion. I would rank Love, Hate, & Other Filters right up there with Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give and should be on every high school reading list.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the characters were well developed and looked forward to learning more about the story line. Some of the emotions of the book started with her after reading certain parts, which to me is a sign of a powerful read. I enjoyed the development of the suicide bomber in the intercalary chapters, which allowed a focus to remain in Maya.

So relevant, authentic, and good! An excellent addition and must-purchase for YA collections; a serious undertone sets this book apart from others of its kind and grants a perspective many miss. A stunning and witty protagonist readers will fall for & empathize endlessly with!

I received a digital ARC from NetGalley, all opinions are my own!

This is such an important book for readers of all ages. Cannot wait to see what comes from this author next.

I loved this book. The first half was a window into another culture and parental expectations and making one's own way in the world, with some love triangle/romantic confusion, and then it took a turn into more chilling events, but it all held together really well. I especially liked the ending, though no spoilers. :-)

Maya is a Muslim teen but that is not her entire story. She would like the world to see past her label and really see her. If you look deeper you find that she is an aspiring filmmaker, a good friend and a normal teen girl searching for love and independence. She wants to break free of her old world parents who want her to live a traditional life within their rules and customs. And she has to deal with a society who hears the word terrorism and immediately things a Muslim did it.

This is such a great book for our time. It is part social commentary, part teen coming of age, and part teen romance. It's really outstanding that Ahmed is able to weave all these elements together in her first book without it feeling forced.

This is a wonderful young adult novel that captures the coming of age story in a way that will resonate with everyone. If you're a parent its like a window to that world you swear you were once a part of but couldn't hope to understand now. If you're a teen you will recognize so many of your own hopes and insecurities and fears that it will feel like looking in a mirror.

Author Samira Ahmed strikes me as an old, old soul who's seen some stuff. But even if that stuff was truly terrible she's found beauty there. She's a poet and non-fiction writer who should be nothing but proud of this, her first foray into fiction for teens. I expect there's much of her in her heroine, teenager Maya Aziz, at least I hope there is since I very much want someone as deeply affecting and lovely as Maya to be a real person.

Maya is a senior in a small high school in Illinois where her parents, Indian Muslim born dentists, keep her on a short leash and have high expectations for her career and personal life. She'll attend a state school and become a doctor or a lawyer and marry a nice Indian Muslim boy and live out a virtuous and successful life. She'll be someone they can be proud of, a trophy that reflects their accomplishments as parents.

But Maya has other ideas. She's secretly applied to NYU and gotten in and plans to be a film maker when she grows up and even worse the boy of her dreams is a blond football player who's knowledge of Indian culture is limited to once having seen "The Namesake" and she's starting to think he might like her back.

She knows her parents not only won't understand, they'll forbid her from going and they'd die before they let her so much as go to the movies with a white boy. And while she understands the value they place on tradition and that what they want from her comes from a place of love she chafes at their curfews and refusal to let her take part in any of the dances or dates all her other friends take for granted.

Maya is just so lovely you can't help wanting all these things for her that she wants for herself. But its balanced by an understanding of her parent's desires as well. What Ahmed does so beautifully is provide the reader with that delicate balance where no one character is wholly right or wholly wrong. Maya's need for independence and a different kind of trust from her parents is worthwhile and right but their overprotective love is understandable too because they understand, in a way that Maya doesn't yet, the kind of world she'll be entering. Especially when a sudden and horrific terrorist attack close to home sets off a chain reaction of horrible events that transform how Maya and her family see their friends, neighbors and country.

This is a perfect weaving of important social and political topics with a melancholy and wonderful coming of age story. Maya is a typical American teenager who also happens to be Indian and Muslim. These are parts of who she but they're not all she is. The heart of Ahmed's story is that journey Maya takes to understanding how all of those parts of herself can fit together to let her understand the value in her parents desires for her and the traditions they want her to continue and reconcile those things with who she wants to become, a person of her own making, with her own dreams.

She's a wonderfully strong character. She's smart and capable and she has enviable drive to succeed at this thing she loves and she's really, really good at it. Its such a nice change to meet a teen with aspirations of film making success who actually understands how to make films. She's like every adorkable kid you knew in high school who can't shut up about Fellini and Cocteau and gets all huffy when you talk about liking "Transformers." But her passion is delightful rather than pretentious because she's so damn likable.

Her world, like her relationships, is marvelously complex. She navigates love and attraction in a stumbling but realistic way. She says the wrong thing sometimes, she gets irrationally angry, she does dangerous, stupid things, and she gets hurt. Even if you can't relate to her exact experience you can relate to how she forges her path because we've all been there.

The supporting players here are just as great. Maya's best friend is appropriately encouraging and worldly wise, a rich girl who's only ever loved Maya for herself and would clearly walk through fire to protect her. Maya's beloved aunt, who struck out on her own and defied convention to become a well respected and successful graphic designer is hugely supportive of her niece but never to the point of incredulity. Phil, the boy of her dreams, seen through Maya's eyes is indeed the stuff of teenage romantic fantasies. A star football player with a deep soul he can't express with his Barbi and Ken crowd he struggles with his developing feelings for Maya and the unfulfilling but less complex world he's always known. But their relationship never feels like some dopey manufactured teen soap opera. Their feelings and reactions are real. This is what young love looks like. Real love doesn't automatically mean forever or happily ever after. Love isn't defined by the length of time it lasts or whether it makes sense and it doesn't always make you happy.

Ahmed also does a really spectacular job of making sense of the senseless acts of barbarity that unfortunately have become part and parcel of our daily lives. There is nothing more insane seeming then these random acts of violence that destroy lives in a heartbeat all in the name of hate filled rhetoric. The terrible acts that take place in this book aren't understandable but she gives them a context that's often missing from the 24 hour news cycle. We spend time with the people who often never have names much less a past that defined them as surely as Maya's has defined her. It doesn't make the violence and death of innocents any less deplorable but you see how it might have been avoided.

What Maya struggles with, personal and spiritual identity in a country that assumes she's a terrorist based on something as arbitrary as her skin color or last name and the simpler but no less important struggles of every teenage girl are treated gently but sincerely. They're very real and very deeply felt struggles because, I suspect, Ms. Ahmed has lived them herself.

Ahmed is also just a wonderful writer, I really can't say that enough. She's that rare young adult author who gets teenagers, their humor, their intelligence, their comprehension of issues adults never believe they'll understand, their resilience and passion and all the stupid and wonderful things that result when they let those feelings fly. I believe she must be a brilliant poet after reading her descriptions of the world through Maya's imaginary lens. She sees beauty everywhere but she appreciates pain and ugliness and treats them with equal reverence. Every word she writes practically sings out how important it is to understand and appreciate the ugliness and the beauty as part of the same thing, something that is always changing and is never just black and white.

This was a moving and important work that I hope many, many people will read..