Name: Sonora
ISBN: 9781616957926

Hannah Lillith Assadi

Ahlam, the daughter of a Palestinian refugee and his Israeli wife, grows up in the arid lands of desert suburbia outside of Phoenix. When she meets her tempestuous counterpart Laura, the two fall into infatuated partnership, experimenting with drugs and sex, and watching helplessly as a series of mysterious deaths claim high school classmates

Sonora

Colton Ray

I'm a bit conflicted on this book. On the one hand, it's written quite well for a debut and has an interesting premise and setting. However, I don't feel the full potential was realized. The beginning starts off in the interesting setting of the Arizona desert with a Middle Eastern family, and there was so much room to explore the culture clash, but it was mostly surface-level reminiscing on how the main character Ahlam grew up with her friend Laura. 

Almost half of the book takes place in New York, where the two girls go to become full-on drug addicts and party girls, and I found this much less interesting. I guess at this point in my life, I don't want to read about people who continually make the worst decisions possible and make no effort to repair their lives. I kept wondering why the main character was staying with this friend who was so clearly toxic, even if they did grow up together. Though her parents are difficult, they are clearly wanting the best for Ahlam, and she mostly gives them a middle finger to go snort coke and sleep with strangers in NYC with her friend. 

For most of the novel, Laura is an awful and repulsive person, and Ahlam is a passive doormat who just seems to drift around in other characters' orbits. It was frustrating to read. I wanted this to be more memorable than it was. I guess I'm just not that into drug stories. Love that cover, though.

2018 NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION'S 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE A fevered, lyrical debut about two young women drawn into an ever-intensifying friendship set against the stark, haunted landscape of the Sonoran desert and the ecstatic frenzy of New York City. Ahlam, the daughter of a Palestinian refugee and his Israeli wife, grows up in the arid lands of desert suburbia outside of Phoenix. In a stark landscape where coyotes prowl and mysterious lights occasionally pass through the nighttime sky, Ahlam’s imagination reigns. She battles chronic fever dreams and isolation. When she meets her tempestuous counterpart Laura, the two fall into infatuated partnership, experimenting with drugs and sex and boys, and watching helplessly as a series of mysterious deaths claim high school classmates. The girls flee their pasts for New York City, but as their emotional bond heightens, the intensity of their lives becomes unbearable. In search of love, ecstasy, oblivion, and belonging, Ahlam and Laura’s drive to outrun the ghosts of home threatens to undo them altogether.

azliana aziz

'For those I come from, there is nothing more devouring than the feeling of want for home, the feeling of need for home. We are all waiting for a form of transport, a ship, a saucer to carry us out of the too-dark night.
For my father’s family this was called Palestine, for my mother’s, it was “next year in Jerusalem.”
One branch of my blood comprised of wandering in the desert for forty years at my birth; the other of wandering for two thousand, only to find themselves home in a land continually threatened by war.
For those who were here before us it was all the names, all the names slowly being erased, names long since renamed, long since buried.     I inherited this longing. I was addicted to it.
And so I was at home with those who wanted and never had enough.
I was at home in the places that could never be.
The places found only in dreams.'


stunning and powerful debut.

Sonora

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