Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

this book was beautifully written; i highlighted so many passages. the story was beautiful as well, it told the reality for so many, and is a really important piece of modern literature as to the syrian war and the struggles of those who leave their homelands, everything they know, after countless unimaginable loss, living in inhumane conditions, seeing monstrous acts, living under the constant threat of death and worse, and then risking their lives and spending all they have, being taken advantage of for the chance of a safer life, only to often arrive in countries where they are seen as a nuisance.
this book is so important and everyone should read it!
aside from the real-world connotations, the fictional story was beautiful

i fell in love with salama and kenan and their loved ones. when we found out that layla wasn’t real: i have not been that shocked by a twist in i don’t know how long, i had not seen it coming at all and it was genuinely heart-wrenching. i appreciated that the ending was “happy” but it didn’t shy away from the long lasting effects of the everything they had been through

Content Warnings

czoltak's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“No matter what happens, you remember that this world is more than the agony it contains.”

🍋💙🍋💙🍋💙🍋💙🍋💙🍋💙🍋💙

I am honestly speechless after this book. I am in shock over how many intense emotions I just experienced over the course of 400 pages. I want to start by saying first and foremost that this should absolutely be required reading in schools. People need to read this and understand a larger scope of the world. This book is so important for spreading the importance of how deeply a war destroys regardless of who’s shores it’s on. The messages and themes of survival, PTSD, and the loss of innocence were heartbreaking and yet so necessary especially in today’s world. For fans of ‘The Book Thief’ and ‘The Hunger Games’, As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow is an incredibly moving story about one girl’s journey to survive war torn Syria. Salama must find a way to save herself and her sanity while the world around her is torn apart and the life she has always known is completely obliterated. With a hallucinatory form of fear as one of her only constant companions, Salama struggles with the need to stay alive but also to stay true to her roots and her home country. Her strength and bravery is so deeply infectious, you’ll be unable to do anything other than root and hope for her over the course of the story. Much like ‘The Book Thief’, the personification of darker themes (death/fear) and the blunt descriptions of the destruction will draw you in and won’t let go even after you turn that final page. This book needs to be picked up and read by so many more. Please pick this up and spread its influence if you’re able. In today’s world this is the kind of literature we need and should be promoting.

Content Warnings

blakeandbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

kelly_e's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Title: As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Author: Zoulfa Katouh
Genre: Young Adult
Rating: 5.00
Pub Date: September 13, 2022

T H R E E • W O R D S

Heartbreaking • Haunting • Hopeful

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager’s life.

Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.

But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.

Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are—not a war, but a revolution—and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I'd seen a few people include As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow on their 'best of 2022' lists, so I instantly added it to my TBR. While YA isn't a genre I typically gravitate towards, I did have a sneaky suspicion I'd need to keep the Kleenex box handy with this one, and those suspicions were confirmed.

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is so heartbreakingly devastating, making it hard to read at times, yet I felt the rawness of Zoulfa Katouh's love, pain, sorrow, and hope in every single word. Touching on loss, grief, trauma, and finding love in the most unexpected of places/times, it's also a story of hope. Each of the characters found a way to wiggle into my heart, particularly Salama. I felt empathetic for everything she'd endured and has to go through. At various points, I found myself contemplating what I'd do in her situation.

The writing was phenomenal! I just could not believe this is a debut novel, and there's no denying this author's raw talent. While the writing is incredibly accessible, something typical of many YA novels, the emotional depth and realness makes this standout above the rest. The structure is well thought out with several twists I didn't expect. I really wish I'd had the audio to go along with the book, as I know it would have added another layer of emotion.

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is so raw and real that it shattered my heart and healed it time and time again. It opened my eyes to a better understanding of life in war-torn Syria - the reasons people flee, the reasons they choose to stay, and the things people will do for those they love. This is YA at it's absolute finest. There's no denying the incredible writer Zoulfa Katouh is and I'll be keeping an eye out for anything she writes in the future.

If you read one book this year, please let it be this one!

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• all readers!
• teens
• anyone looking for a strong female protagonist

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"Might. What a word. It holds infinite possibilities of a life that could have been. So many options stacked one on top of the other, like cards waiting for a player to pick and choose."

"Survivor's skin is a remorse we are cursed to wear forever."

"Death is an excellent teacher."

Content Warnings

halfass_reviewer's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This book broke my heart. It mended back, barely.

Content Warnings

valkyrie1's review

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dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

whenjessreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

I didn’t read the blurb before jumping into this book so I got hit in the face with so much emotion basically from page 1. This book is about Syria, and war, about sorrows and dreams, about a strong dedicated hijabi girl who wants to heal her people and a cinnamon roll sweetheart of a Muslim boy who wants to save them.

I knew absolutely nothing about the Syrian civil war, and now my heart is just swollen with grief for all these people I didn’t even know (and who are technically fictional, but I digress). But somehow even amongst the devastation that is the setting for this book, I felt hope? Threads of it, running through the storyline. Additionally, the romance is beautiful and pure and sweet, and the absolute perfect foil for the heaviness of the rest of the book.

It was a little repetitive on the descriptions in some places, and the writing took me a little while to adapt to (for some reason it felt a bit clunky at the beginning, though I didn’t notice after that - it’s very possible I was just adjusting to a different writing style from my last read) but the whole book was just full of beautiful imagery and it felt more raw and real than anything I’ve read in a long time.

I think my heart physically broke somewhere in the middle (you’ll find pieces of it stuck in the pages around chapter 29).

I’m putting some trigger warnings for this book because I think it’s necessary to reinforce that is is a book about WAR. It is most definitely beautiful but it is also brutal. Please be on the look out for violence, sexual assault, PTSD and other mental health issues, medical trauma, the deaths of both adults and children, starvation and torture and bombings and grief and all of those associated war-related horrors. Be gentle with yourself.

Content Warnings

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