Hanna Alkaf

They Wish They Were Us meets The Queen’s Gambit in the world of competitive Scrabble when a teen girl is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend a year after the fact when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages. CATALYST 13 points noun: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet. But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All’s fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it. As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.

Queen of the Tiles

fatru tamzil

"I know the relief is temporary, but grief, I’m learning, is a burden you carry your whole life, and a smart person would welcome any breaks they can get." 

What's this book about? It is about Scrabble it is about competitiveness, it is about friendship, but it is also about grief, and how can we deal with it. How sometimes it has us in its clutch, and how healing from them is a gradual, painful thing. 

The premise of the book is very interesting: Najwa Bakri, a talented Scrabble player, is back at tournament when she received a series of messages and post from her dead best friend, Trina Low. Every messages and post wake the curiousity in her, who could have been sending the messages? What do they want? 

The mystery on this book, it keeps you on the edges of your seat. It's very easy and addicting to read, as the tension pace up, and you really want to read more and more. The twist, the competitiveness (the competitiveness! it's sharper than sword), and the friendship; at the heart of it all. 

What I really love about this book is how flawed the characters are. Everyone has a flaw, even Trina. While we are explorimg Najwa's grief and her relationship with her friends (and competitors) we also learn about Trina, and how she was. Every single character in this book, in a way, has make a mistake. Some small, some big, but the mistakes and the flaws that they had make them human, and evrn more real. 

I did mention grief, and it's a pretty big theme of this book. Najwa is healing from the grief--and the thing that she enjoys, but also associates with the grief itself; we also sees how the others are affected and shaken by the events. How healing a grief takes time, and it takes a lot. 

And the trick. The twist. Everyone is ambitious in this book. Everyone wanted to win. And absolutely everyone is ruthless when it came to the game. I love the sharpness and ambition they have, and the friendship that also follows after that, slowly budding out of the accident. 

Queen of The Tiles surprised me by the twist, warm me by the friendships, and validated me with its depiction of grief. 

P.S: Alina texting Najwa telling her she loves her Kakak but she will deny it had me laughed out loud because it literally is me with my sister. Sisters are like that. 

Also "I'm the Kakak, you're the Adik." The way my actual Kakak also say this every single time 😭😭😭😭

A delightful -whodunnit- set in Malaysia, in the competitive scrabble tournament world of teens.

Najwa loses her best friend in a freak accident at a scrabble tournament, takes a year to recover and then comes back again. Having all the players around, she tries to solve the mystery of her friend’s death Trina.

I thought the pacing and setting were great. No one is as dramatic as teens, and there were a lot of interesting characters. I would definitely read something else by the author.

The book is ultimately a gift for nerdy word lovers, with every chapter starting with an obscure word.

Suzanne

A delightful -whodunnit- set in Malaysia, in the competitive scrabble tournament world of teens.

Najwa loses her best friend in a freak accident at a scrabble tournament, takes a year to recover and then comes back again. Having all the players around, she tries to solve the mystery of her friend’s death Trina.

I thought the pacing and setting were great. No one is as dramatic as teens, and there were a lot of interesting characters. I would definitely read something else by the author.

The book is ultimately a gift for nerdy word lovers, with every chapter starting with an obscure word.

Nicole Dykeman

3.5
Lots of fun wordplay, a diverse cast, and a really fun setting. There are real, raw discussions about grief and other tough topics between the twists and turns of your typical YA mystery. The prose itself is really great too, though the end got a bit villainous monologue-y. I will definitely pick up work from this author in the future.

Zoe Smolen

This is such a full YA mystery! 

It's just a touch over the top, but mostly feels realistic and relatable. The cast of characters is extremely diverse in multiple ways, and they're all flawed in believable ways. 

The use of Scrabble and Scrabble words makes for a fun reading experience, and the words chosen move the story along and you get definitions for all of them. If the SATs still quizzed on random vocabulary, this would be a great book to read to study for them. 

Overall, super fun.

Queen of the Tiles

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