A review by lizlogan
The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi

4.0

This book is wonderful! The book is lyrical, filled with wonderful imagery, and well done. The author is obviously connected to the culture, and uses phrases in both Dari and Pashto to emphasize certain points. As someone who does not speak either of these languages, I would have preferred either a quicker translation to follow, or less use of the languages within the books, but overall it was not a bad thing. I would have given the book five stars if it had been something that the typical American could have found any sort of identification with. This book may have been better marketed to an adult audience than a teen audience. Many times throughout the book I forgot that the characters were teens because of the hardness of their lives and differences. This is not to say that different points of view should not be represented to teens, but that this would be hard for the typical American teenager to find anything to latch onto in this story because everything is so foreign about it, and that is unfortunate because it is a gorgeous, wonderful story.