This was such an intriguing premise and I was really excited to dive in... until I wasn't. I picked it up and put it down in favour of other titles so many times. I finally made it to the end, but it wasn't because I wanted to know what happened, but so that I could write this review.

I'm going to preface this review by stating that generally, I'm not a big romance person and I came to this book more for the historical fiction/modern day sleuthing. Those parts of the book generally did not disappoint. It's a bit slow at the beginning, but it definitely picks up at the end and the last 40% or so are almost unputdownable. It's a beautiful story about history, the legacies we leave, fitting into places, and how women and people of color are so often erased from history. I especially loved the Leila chapters for this reason.

That being said, there's also a decent amount of romance in this book, and I found most of it melodramatic and dull. I'm not a romance person, so someone else might come to this book and like it just fine, so part of this is just my own taste. I enjoyed Khayyam and Alexandre's relationship, but would've been fine with them just being friends/fellow detectives. Some of the stuff that happens with his uncle and the essay were a little weird, but whatever. I didn't really care for Khayyam moping over Zaid either, and that little confrontation mostly left me bored and wanting to get back to Leila. But this might just be me not liking relationship drama so take this with a grain of salt. I genuinely enjoyed this book and recommend it for pretty much any YA fan, especially since it contains several different genres in it.

What's a 17 year old American muslim girl to do while in Paris? Have a romance and solve a centuries old mystery, of course. The book weaves seamlessly from Khayyam's current day summer of self discovery with Leila's story of survival and love lost. All round fun and luxurious read.

If you are a teen interested in other cultures and art history you will love this story. However, I am not sure if this will be as appealing to the general teen reader. Fairly realistic view of teens complicated relationships at this age . Positive, although repetitive, discussion of how women's often forgotten roles throughout history. With a decent library budget I will purchase this for the library and included a shelf talker to attract students of art history. However, if I had a limited budget I'd probably order a second copy of Internment first.

I received an advance reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the storytelling of this book and the treasure hunt. I know nothing of the art world and just basic things of the writers mentioned in this book but still found it really easy to follow those aspects as Khayyam was able to lay out how each person, writing, and painting related to each other through out her journey to find a treasure.

I have no doubt that many of Samira Ahmed’s fans will enjoy her latest. But it’s frustrating when a book that could have been really good is offered in mediocre form. In this story of modern-day Khayyam, whose life becomes intertwined with that of Leila, a nineteenth-century Muslim woman, Ahmed seems to be going for a theme of women being able to star in, and tell, their own stories. But she doesn’t give her readers enough credit, choosing instead to dumb things down by telling rather than showing through awkward, artificial dialog. And the contrived plot twists and convenient discoveries of documents and letters.... Whew!

Ahmed tackles big issues. I hope that as she continues to write YA lit, she’ll have a little more confidence in her readers and their ability to navigate nuance.

Thank you, NetGalley and Soho Teen, for the advance readers copy.

I received an advance reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I love Ahmed’s writing style. I loved the juxtaposition of Leila’s story and Khayyam’s. I thought it was a really fresh and interesting take on a subject I find quite boring, personally. The intrigue of solving Leila’s story, and proving her existence was quite enchanting to me. I appreciated that the love story wasn’t simple and straight forward, as no love stories are. Overall, this was a solid read, that I would recommend to others who like a love story mixed with a bit of intrigue and mystery. 4/5 stars.

Another book that simply didn't work for me. Loved the cover and the premise, but it just didn't end up being.my cup.ot.tea at all.

The part of me that loved Chasing Vermeer and From the Mixed Up Files was definitely into this. The part that avoids love triangles and "I just can't quit him" romance...not so much. I also felt that the message of women (especially BIPOC women) being erased throughout history - which, obviously, yes! - was hammered home a little too frequently and forcefully, eventually becoming fairly grating. I wonder, too, about the inclusion of the sections about Leila and whether the story might have been stronger without them - while they certainly followed the theme of putting women back in the narrative, they were written with such brevity that I didn't feel as if there were enough there to truly draw me in. (Plus I found it a little strange that she constantly refers to the love of her life as "the Giaour" or "my Giaour" - perhaps this was some sort of commentary on the reversal of a man's name and story, the titular character of this poem, being lost to history, but it wasn't really clear.)

Certainly conceptually interesting enough, and the mystery kept me reading, but I don't know if the characters quite pulled me in completely.

Art, poetry, Romanticism, and a nice mystery. Fun read with just the right amount of humor, romance, and suspense.

Samira Ahmed is a must-have voice for the reading table at home and the classroom shelf. I love how she takes youthful romance, adventure, culture, and identity all together in this book. I’m hungry for more of her words.

This book requires a lot of knowledge about particular art and literary figures that made the book feel really inaccessible to me as a reader. I felt like if I knew more about Alexander Dumas or Eugene Delecroix I would have appreciated what the author was doing with this book a lot more. However, all of the references, coupled with the characters' constant conversations about these historical figures (and the second narrative seeming like a representation of a character in a poem or painting that I wasn't familiar with) made this a less enjoyable read than I had hoped.

Hot damn this was good.

I started off really not knowing what to think of it. The book started very slow paced and I couldn't get a grip on the story to keep reading. I didn't really connect with the characters and overal it was just not great.

But I kept reading and thank god that I did. First of all I love art and history together. It's some kind of mystery that has to be solved everytime. This book had that and that's what was amazing. I loved that everything was in Paris, France and that there were little small french things in it. However I do want to give a little note that I do think some more french sayings should be a bit more translated. It wasn't a problem for me because I know french but I feel like it would be for future readers.

The story was absolutely amazing and I really enjoyed specific scenes and thought it made an amazing development for the story. The ending was also amazingly written and I couldn't get enough of the main characters.

Would definitely recommend. Thank you to the author and publisher for giving me this arc I loved it and would definitely buy this when it comes out!

Powerful history involving famous British, French, Arab, Muslim and half-Haitian poets and painters.
Nice links to famous artists like Dumas that had unknown cultural ties with the Muslim and African world.
Ahmed does a nice job of bringing forth hidden Muslim and Arab figures into the light.

A summer in Paris. A girl with her life crumbling around her. A boy with a secret and a famous ancestor. A woman with raven tresses--but was she even real, or purely fictional? A painting that may or may not exist. A biracial French writer. A series of letters. And the Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Lord Byron himself. What do they all have in common? A nearly two century old mystery.

Khayyam Maquet is many things--sometimes too many things: Indian. French. American. Muslim. Biracial. A budding art historian. In Paris for her annual vacation with her parents, Khayyam is recovering from the stinging blow and potential end to her art historian career before it even begins after a failed entry to an essay contest; to make it worse, the boy she has been dating is refusing to put a label on their relationship, and posting selfies of himself with another girl. So when she bumps into a boy whose name is--100% legitimate--Alexandre Dumas, she finds herself accompanying him all across Paris to solve a mystery.

Did Alexandre Dumas receive a painting from painter Eugene Delacroix? And what does it have to do with the Byron poem, "The Giaour", a poem that Delacroix created a painting based off of? And who was the woman with raven tresses? What is her story?

Ahmed weaves a masterful story in two different time periods, with two different strong female protagonists--who are perhaps not as different as they seem. A delightful mystery that leads the characters--and reader--to go deeper, question more about life, love, art, and literature set in a glorious backdrop of the City of Lights (and Love). Grab some French pastries and curl up with "Mad, Bad, & Dangerous to Know!"

OMG! Isn’t it enchanting idea to read a book about two powerful women from different time lines who want to raise their voices and tell their stories! One of them is in Paris, searching for the deepest secrets hid behind a remarkable drawing with a charming French guy carries his descendant Alexandre Dumas’ name! And the other woman is a haseki, leaving behind the walls of Ottoman Harem, telling her secret love triangle story which resulted tragically!

Didn’t you get excited and start to dance like me? To get in the mood I added some Oriental belly shake moves to my dance but my friends laughed so hard and recorded me (yes, after seeing my magical movies on their phone camera, I decided they were combination of Gangham style and a hamster who tries to catch its own tail! So I gave up!) in the meantime. So I locked myself in my bathroom and kept on dancing (of course I put blanket on the mirror not to see myself) and started my reading!

Khayyam, the young heroine of the book named after famous Persian poet Omar Khayyam. She is French American, Indian American and also Muslim American. An immigrant, biracial, interfaith. But she is not a blank page of passport everyone gets to stamp a label of their choosing! She wants to be heard, she wants to leave her traces in the universe! She wants to follow her own path to create her own story she’s destined to do! She wants you to know her name. Just like Leila who wants to take control of her own life and make her own choices but she lives at the world dominated by man power and she has no choice but keep her silence, bow her head and patiently endure the hand life dealt to her.

Instead of some historical faults about the harem life structure ( I was planning to work on a documentary about the hidden face of Harem behind the closed doors so I read tons of researches for months but guess what, I went back to work on thriller projects!) the book’s story-telling is pure, lyrical, fascinating. The powerful feminism messages and intersected stories of two different women’s lives and their challenging quest to raise their voices were remarkable.

It’s memorable and heart felting, poignant time travel story. Not literally but the author takes your feet off the ground and helps to take a journey between different continents, time zones, cultures to tell us we’re a part of different cultural, lyrical mosaic and a note from a symphony and we deserve to heard, understood and we can actually find our own tunes by our own life experiences!

I think I have to read the previous books of Samira Ahmed. Especially “Internment” is part of my long time TBR list and I have to prioritize the best books and work on my pile if I don’t want to be squeezed under them sooner!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Soho Teen for sharing this poetic book’s ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press and Soho Teen for the advance reader copy, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, by Samira Ahmed in exchange for an honest review. I have read and loved Samira Ahmed’s Love, Hate and Other Filters and Internment! Ahmed has an authentic writing style that grips the reader with truth and toughness. Khayyam is American, French, Indian, and Muslim spending her summer at her parents’ home in France. Crushed that her essay for college is totally debunked, Khayyam wonders what she will do now that she can’t get into her art history school of choice. It all starts with Khayyam stepping in dog poop when she meets and is rescued by Alexandre Dumas, yes, a direct descendant of THE Alexandre Dumas! As they roam about France, picnic, investigate libraries and break into buildings, Khayyam and Alexandre begin to investigate the existence of a mystery woman in the Delacroix-Dumas family. As they delve deeper and deeper into this woman’s identity, Khayyam will strongly relate to “her” story, her voice, and the oppression she fought throughout her life. The alternating narratives and the original letters really made this an interesting premise; I could not stop turning the pages! Teens will identify with Khayyam and Alexandre’s summer in France but will also be riveted with the 19th century Muslim woman who carves out an interesting life during a restrictive time in history. A must read!

Three stars

This book was a solidly mixed bag for me. I had a very hard time with the bulk of the novel, which focuses on Khayyam's perspective. There is a love triangle that I struggled hard (and failed) to care about. Khayyam's problems for the first two-thirds are grating. She finds herself torn between two potential romantic interests, but they are both kind of awful. Since this is her main focus, it has to be the reader's, and it's just...tough to care. The sections told from Leila's perspective are much more interesting; those were the sole reason I completed the book.

Overall, I feel a bit disappointed in this. The concept and structure seem so interesting, but overall, the focus on the present-day romantic relationships made me wish for my own jinn to come to the rescue.

I have read a lot that I like from this author and look forward to more, but this one just did not work well for me.

This was my final read of 2019, and it was one of my favorites of the year! Khayyam is a feminist badass but also a totally relatable character, and I love the way that her present-day story is intertwined with Leila's story from two centuries behind. Highly recommend!

I should have loved this book. It has everything I like--smart, diverse protagonists who are worldly and curious; secret history; lost artworks; fascinating clues; bilingual jokes. But I have to pan it. Because despite all of these good things--and a fun story about two young people tracking down a missing painting on the estate of Alexandre Dumas--at the end one of the characters reveals that he's stolen a sketch from a state archive. He claims that no one knew it was there and that no one will miss it, but scholars and archivists know better. It wasn't lost--it was in an archive. archives know what they have. And despite the admirable realism the author gives to the discover of the missing painting, she should have known, too, that every sketch, every scrap, is just as important to scholars. So while this should have gotten 5 stars and a rave review, it gets 1, because those of us who do research--we need those scraps, those things that arrogant teens think no one else knows about, that they think we won't need.