I had learned of a local young woman who had written a story. She had written during her high school years and submitted to publishers. While reviews were reasonably favorable, none were willing to proceed. She and her sisters decided to self-publish and distribute the book. Believing in yourself and determination to achieve your goals are essential to life in this world. These are attributes I encouraged and applauded in my four children, three of whom were girls (and I must admit all are older than the author of this book). To support these women, I purchased the book.

The author and her sisters are black Muslim women. I am a white Christian. I have absolutely no understanding of life in this city from their perspective. I would like to know more. I thought a story through her eyes might help. So, I read the book.

The author was high school age when the story was developed so I was expecting a young adult reader story. It was. But, dang! It blew me away!

It is a story of outcasts living in an oppressive town, banding together to fight back, identify and bring the corrupt leaders to justice. The feelings of oppression might be felt by many of us at various stages of our lives and this draws us in. But the story is centered on blacks in a town ruled by the KKK. The epitome of oppression! Racism.

Well paced. Well developed. I had to read it to the end! It was good. It was very good.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.
Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.

Important, poignant and very very upsetting. This book should be picked up by everyone. I felt mad at the events and of course sorry for our main character. The writing was amazing, the pacing was fantastic. Overall, one of my favourites!

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
An interesting idea for this story and I liked the representation. The writing was good and the characters engaging

However, at times the story seemed to take strange twists and turns that didn't reflect well onto real life. It was a shame as I felt a more realistic story would have been more engaging and hard hitting.
On the whole, a good book.

I requested this book from Netgalley and I’m glad I did so!

With a cover like that, there was no way I wasn’t requesting this book from Netgalley. I know that this is the work of a very young author and her craft will improve with experience. However, I’d like to point out a few things that kept me from enjoying this book.

Firstly, the characters took too long to figure out certain things that were plain to the reader immediately. Secondly, with the danger that the protagonist was in, it seems weird that her parents allowed her to continue going to school, roam around in the neighborhood, and so on. Thirdly, the book could have been much shorter than it was and still retain all the important bits.

What I did like was how the author portrayed the discriminatory characters. One of them was the protag’s teacher. Even though his explanation made no sense — and he was trying to teach a POC what a book on racism was about — he felt he was in the right. Sometimes, no matter what you say to a racist doesn’t make any difference to their erroneous beliefs or how nonsensical they’re being.

One of the quotes or rather phrases from the book made me laugh and stood out. At one point, the protagonist exclaimed, “The caucasity.”

I couldn't get into the right head space for this book.

I do plan on giving it another go, however.

I had an opportunity to read a copy of Race to the Finish Line through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. I was first intrigued to read the novel based on its book cover. I must say the story was just as good. This debut title by Aisha Yusuf was relevant, fast-paced, and mysterious. I would rate this five stars even though there were aspects in which you had to suspend belief such as the town being that utterly racist and the main character's too lax parents. I can understand giving your child room to grow, but these kids had way too much freedom. But as with all fictional mysteries, especially ones in which the protagonists are teens, don't you have to give some leeway to the plausibility of the events happening in real life? With that said, I enjoyed the storyline which was about Aaleyah, a teenage girl in her senior year of high school, suddenly finding herself uprooted from her native Canada because of her father's job to a small southern town in Arkansas in which the natives are definitely not welcoming to a black Muslim girl. She learns early on that for years blacks have mysteriously disappeared without a trace and no investigations by the local authorities. During a club fair, she happens upon the two other black students at her school who happen to run the school newspaper. They quickly form a bond and the three find themselves on a quest to solve the town's mystery. The story is written to always keeps you guessing as they uncover new clues. As I stated earlier it is well-paced. I also like that although the main character is black and Muslim, that is not the story. And the author doesn't try to make it a big deal, but just seamlessly weaves her identity with her everyday mundane actions. She does that with the other black characters too. There is no big to-to about what they looked liked with all the "cafe-latte" and "cocoa" colored skin and wavy or wiry hair descriptions that many authors make a point of doing. That was very refreshing. I look forward to seeing the author pen more young adult fiction.

Did not enjoy this one as much as I thought I would.
The main character wasn’t as relatable but maybe that’s just me.

Thank you to the author for sending me a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
3/5 stars.
I was initially drawn to this book by the cover. It’s so striking and it tells you exactly what this book is about.
It was a decent read, but it’s not my favourite. I found that I didn’t connect with any of the characters, and the writing style felt more like it was telling me about everything that was happening instead of showing me. Aaleyah was an interesting character, but I found her to be really annoying at some parts. I also didn’t like the way that she interacted with her parents when anything serious had happened. Her parents were concerned and worried about her, and yet she was trying to brush everything off and she would be the one making the decisions about what they would do. It didn’t feel realistic to me.
The mystery aspect was interesting if a little predictable. I did know who the “bad guys” were pretty quickly, and I also figured out what had been happening as well. The way that the characters went about researching and investigating was done well, but it felt like there was a lot of filler of them sitting around and reading articles. It made the book feel as if it was dragging on at times.
Racism is a main theme that is covered in this book. Aaleyah is force to endure serious racism at school and in the new town that she and her family have moved to. It was pretty intense at times, and definitely scary. One thing that made me feel uncomfortable was the way that Aaleyah referred to every single person in her school as a racist. The generalization felt kind of hypocritical because of the racism that Aaleyah was facing, and the way that she explained that she was probably the first Muslim many of these kids had ever met. They were generalizing what they knew about people of her race and religion onto her, and Aaleyah did the same thing to them. I think that the portrayal of racism was raw, horrific, and probably accurate (although I can’t speak about the accuracy for sure), but I would have liked to see Aaleyah and the characters in the school grow as they learned more.

The cover was what initially took my attention. I mean a kkk and a Muslim girl and the fact that’s it’s labeled a mystery.

Aaliyah is the main character she is a Black Muslim girl who moved a racist city in the US from Canada.

The story itself just made me a lot angry! The stuff Aaliyah has to witness and endure like real sad. I feel the amount of people giving this book a 1 or 2 star never had to endure racism. This book was pretty good and I’m glad I read it. Some real life stuff here.

I’m not sure how I feel about this story. It’s concept is quite smart and tackles a lot of issues but the execution could be fine tuned slightly.

I received a complimentary eARC of Race to the Finish Line from author Aisha Yusuf through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Aisha Yusuf for the opportunity! This has not swayed my opinion.

I was so excited to read this book. That cover with a muslin girl squared up against a KKK clansman overlaid on newsprint is powerful, and the pun in the title certainly caught my eye as well. It's 2020, and race issues are front and centre. We've seen so many very important books about race and racism come out, and I was hoping this would be one of them.

The premise is there! I had such high hopes for this black muslin girl and her journey navigating her senior year of high school in a town that doesn't want to give her a chance. I wanted to go on this journey with Aaleyah and fight with her. I wanted to see and hear and feel this experience with her. Unfortunately, this book is completely tell rather than show, and Aaleyah feels like a very flat character. My level of investment in this story came purely from my expectations for it and most definitely waned as I attempted to read it. I DNFd at about 50%.

I think Aisha Yusuf shows promise as an author and I would absolutely love to see what comes next. Not every debut novel is gold, so I won't hold this against her at all. I'm sure the next one will be better, and I think Aisha has a lot of important things to say, so I hope she'll continue to tell us.

This was t for me, I wanted it to be good, the subject matter, the importance of the story but it just felt a bit erratic , the issues weren’t looked into in depth and it felt predictable to me

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Race To The Finish Line is all in all a good read with some important themes such as small town racism, exclusion, and human trafficking. The book seems to be marketed towards a YA public, but I think middle schoolers will definitely appreciate it too, and the overall tone would also work for a younger and older audience. I know I would have appreciated this novel as a kid and a young adult!

Aaleyah is about to enter her senior year in high school in Canada when her parents announce that they will be moving to a small town in Arkansas, USA for a year, because of her father’s job. Aaleyah’s main concern about moving lies in the fact that she is both Black and Muslim, and is worried about how she will be treated in the US. Her fears are very much confirmed when they arrive, as not only are there barely any Black families in the town, there are barely any families of color there at all. She is stared down, insulted, ignored, and called a terrorist during her first day at school, and it only starts to get a bit better for her once she makes friends with a couple of other seniors in the journalism club. But things are about to get a lot worse when the three friends uncover some deeply disturbing town secrets…

This book is like a modern day Nancy Drew meets (not so gratuitously violent) Jack Reacher but with real, well-rounded characters. Aaleyah is a regular teen who loves her friends, coffee, driving around, food, singing full force along to her favorite songs, boxing, and asking questions about everything. She is also a practicing Muslim and wears a hijab, like millions of other Muslim teens in North America, but it isn’t the main part of her identity. What I really, really appreciated about Aaleyah as a character is that she is a completely normal teen but she is also a teen that is rarely represented in books, movies or TV shows. More of this please!

Some of the pacing in the novel felt a little rushed, and I would have loved to have dived a little more into the human trafficking part of the novel, as well as some of the other characters who felt a little underdeveloped, and there were a few loose ends here and there (where did the English teacher fit into the network of villains?), but all in all it was a good read, with some great themes, a really strong and loveable main character, and a good mystery that made it kind of unputdownable!

I can’t wait to see what else Aisha Yusuf has up her sleeve!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Race To The Finish Line is one of those books where the cover instantly jumped out and made me want to learn more about it; there are probably few covers as instantly grabbing as a Black Muslim girl standing up to a member of the KKK, especially in 2020. When I discovered that the author is herself a young Muslim woman of colour, and that she was choosing to write about life as a member of that demographic in the US, I was instantly on board.

The book follows Aaleyah, a seventeen-year-old Black Muslim girl living in Canada with her family. When her father gets a new job in the US Aaleyah and her parents move to the town of Anderton, Arkansas. Upon arriving Aaleyah is shocked to find that the town is more then 90% white, and incredibly racist.  She's subjected to stares in public, muttered insults, and full blown verbal assault at school. And this is only the beginning of the abuse that she receives. Digging into the town history she discovers that there's an alarming trend of missing persons reports for minorities in Anderton. Teaming up with her two new friends, Brianna and Matthew, she sets out to dig into this past, all whilst trying to survive the racists that infest the town.

I have to be honest, at first I wasn't sure what to think of the book due to the writing style. The lead character is in her teens, yet the writing often felt like it was aimed at a younger audience. This was largely due to the simplicity of a number of the scenes, the way that Yusuf would gloss over certain details and jump around the narrative very quickly, not giving events a chance to breath before moving on to the next. For the first few chapters I was unsure if I liked the book or not.

However, once Aaleyah reached her school things changed. Suddenly events were a lot more interesting, the things that Aaleyah was experiencing had me on the edge of my seat, and the faster pace began to work a lot better. It felt like I'd found the meat of the story, and the first few chapters were Yusuf quickly getting through the set-up so that she could focus on the important stuff.

This part of the book wasn't exactly enjoyable, because I don't think you could ever class this kind of story as enjoyable, but it was certainly grabbing. Yusuf didn't shy away from showing the realities of the racism and Islamophobia that Aaleyah faces. There are times where she is verbally attacked, complete with racial slurs, physical assaults, vandalism, and appearances from the KKK. This is a book that will test you, it will make you feel angry and on edge, it could even hurt you, because despite being a work of fiction this is a very real story.

It's a sad thing that this kind of story isn't relegated to the past, but is still happening today. The Ku Klux Klan are active across the US, Black people are murdered by white supremacists and cops (with the two often indistinguishable), and the Black community have had to take to the streets in protest across the world to demand equality and justice. The way that minorities are treated in the US is fucking abhorrent, and this book doesn't shy away from that.

I don't know what it's like to be treated differently because of the colour of your skin, to face such vile hatred simply because you look different. I can't understand how hard this kind of thing must be for people like Aaleyah, like Aisha Yusuf. I experience some discrimination because I'm a disabled trans woman, but I know that what I face is a far cry from what Black people in the US suffer through every single day, where you honestly don't know if you're about to be murdered or not if a cop stops you. I don't understand how someone can live with that kind of pressure and hatred thrown at them and remain so strong and so compassionate, and even after reading this book I still don't get it.

Reading Race To The Finish Line made me angry at time. It made me so fucking angry that this is daily reality for some people, and for so many people. It made my heart race as the anger and despair of that kind of life washed over me, and it had me close to tears. This might just be a fictional story, but it's also a window into the lives of so many people, people whose only crime is the colour of their skin. 

Race To The Finish Line might not be the most polished book I've ever read, and there might have been moments where I wish things were done differently in the narrative, but it's also a book that moved me. It had a hell of an impact on me, and is one that I know is going to stick in my head for a long while. I know racism can be a scary subject for white people, it can be something that you don't want to admit is as bad as it is, something that still has such a stranglehold on society, but it's important that you at the very least start to look at it. We can't make things better if we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening. If the news is too scary, if real life accounts are too awful to get you engaged, start with this book, and learn a little of what it's like to have to live with that hanging over your head everyday.  A must read.

2.5 ✨
It hurts to type this but this book was alll over the place. It sucks because I was so excited for this cover, the premise, the representation.... and yet it fell flat.

I appreciated the review of hard hitting topics - racism, Islamophobia, black face, sex trafficking, mental health - but I don’t think the author fully delved into these topics. Everything seemed jumbled together and then at times a few of these topics were explored a little more deeply.

Sadly, the mystery part of the story wasn’t interesting or intriguing. It was quite predictable but still had me side eyeing the end of the story.

Why did we have to guess the ethnicity of Alyeah’s friends? I can only assume that they were Latinx and Asian American but could never fully confirm that in the book.

Overall, I do want to commend Yusuf’s effort on their debut novel. I hope Aisha continues to write stories with Black Muslim characters!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an early eARC of this book. I’m grateful for the opportunity to review it.

As a Muslim, I was ecstatic to know there was a main character who was Muslim. I was already sold. The better part about this book was the plot line too. Usually, when there's a book or a tv show involving a Muslims girl, the point of the book/show is to show how the girl is being oppressed by her religion, and she needs a white boy to save her. This book, on the other hand, is not about that at all.

So, a brief summary. Aaliyah is a Black Canadian Muslim, who just finds out her father has been offered a new job in the US. So she moves with her parents to a new town that is inherently racist. It's a town full with whites, and Aaliyah's family are the exception. Being the exception, they're immediately faced with special treatment ranging from staring, bullying, threats, and physical abuse. The author doesn't lay back from showing the truth about racism and Islamophobia, which I admire, because it's a much harsher reality to those who face it on a daily basis. It would be nice, if there was a note about such trigger warnings for those who wouldn't be able to handle it.

But as much as I thought the story line sold me, it really didn't. The characters were not vivid. They lacked the details that made me fall in love with the characters; they were flat, bland. Aaliyah's relationship with her family is sweet; I won't lie. But it was just told, nothing was really shown to us. Also, I understood that her parents wanted the best for her and for themselves. But what didn't make sense was the fact they still continued to live in the town despite the discrimination against them.

Another thing was Aaliyah's friends. She had friends who were Latinx and Chinese. While it is shown that Aaliyah faced discrimination, it isn't shown that her friends faced discrimination too, especially in a school who explicitly shows racism with the exception of administration.

While I didn't fall in love with this book, it was an interesting read to say the least. Would I recommend it? Not entirely. But I did appreciate the representation with Aaliyah. And maybe there can be future books with Muslim characters as well.

Interesting storyline! The plot had me hooked, and yes I could predict some of the big twists, but it was still interesting. I can see this being a great read for my reluctant readers!

*𝙄 𝙫𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙙𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧'𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙥𝙮 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙉𝙚𝙩𝙜𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙣 𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬. 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙢𝙮 𝙤𝙬𝙣*

𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿: The cover is direct, colorful, and attention-grabbing. I think it would be hard for anyone to see this book over and to not immediately want to read it or at least skim through the pages. The cover alone piqued my interest and had me eager to read this book.

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: Flat, lacked true development, and disappointing. The character development was a huge let down. They lacked depth all throughout. The reader is told about the impact of interactions more than actually seeing it. Even the lead character's relationship with her parents and brother fell flat despite it being written that she is close to them. I didn't have a connection with any of the characters, which made me not really care about them. Usually, you expect to be rooting for at least one character if not more or to strongly dislike a character. None of that happened.

Also, I have to say that as a POC, I am confused by the author's poor development of the only other non-racist people. I believe they were possibly Latinx and Asian, and were the main character's friends in the racist town where they also had the misfortune of moving to. The author also missed am opportunity to introduce local characters who could actually talk about their experiences as a way to compare the experiences of other black people with that of Black Muslims.

𝗣𝗹𝗼𝘁: I get the many points that the author was intending to convey. The plot was amazing, but poorly developed. The writing was underwhelming. No matter how much I read, I never really cared about the "mystery" and undercover operations.

𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: I really wish the writing would have corresponded with the amazing cover. I wanted so badly to love this book because of its message. The more I read, the more disappointed I felt and eventually could myself location/page checking to see how much longer I had to go before I reached the end (that is never a good sign). I think that if the author went back and developed the characters and setting more, improved the depth of the interactions so the author gets to experience them with the characters more versus being told by a character about it in a reflective way, and strengthened the character interactions so that they actually propel the story forward, then this could be a really good book. The potential is there.

Rating: 2.5 stars

I think that this is a book with a very interesting concept, but the execution was lacking overall. There was basically no description throughout the entire thing, and as someone who really likes atmosphere, it was underwhelming. The scene that comes to mind the most is when our main character goes to a school dance, and everyone is talking about how beautiful and well decorated it is, but we don't get told anything about what it looks like, and i couldn't get invested because I couldn't immerse myself in the story.
There was an extreme vibe of 'telling not showing', not only during descriptions, but everything, and i didn't like it at all: "we went to diner and i ate ______", "we went to the bookstore and did this".
I think we had some really likeable characters, but we didn't know anything about them, so i couldn't get as invested in them as I needed to. We literally know 3 things about our main character, and we're told two of them in the synopsis.
Even though the plot was a bit predictable, I did still enjoy reading it, but there was a definite lack of flair.