A review by amyreadsbooks917
Ground Zero by Alan Gratz

3.0

I've tried to write a full review of this book, and I am struggling. I really wanted to like this book. Gratz often pushes the envelope with opinion presented as fact. I appreciate that most of the time he presents several perspectives. Clearly, in this book, he was attempting to show that the global mindset of 9/11 is quite disjointed with America's mindset.

I think I really enjoyed and appreciated the diversity of perspectives up until the final few chapters. It felt like there was too much of a "CLEARLY this is what we should do to fix all of our problems" type of presentation. Throughout the book, the complex perspectives seemed to be well explained, but then at the end, it felt too simplistic. The idea suggested is that all war should stop and Americans should evacuate all countries immediately and the Afghan people would finally be at peace. However, throughout the book Reshmina continuously points out that Afghan people have been conquered again and again and again and the Taliban were the new conquerers. I feel like the ending switched the script of the whole story to make the American soldiers the bad guys. It was honestly confusing after a lot of the previous set up. I can't pinpoint where the narrative shifted, but something just didn't settle at the end like I was expecting.

Trigger Warnings (spoilers): Descriptions of people in elevator car plunging to their deaths, someone has their skin melted off by burning jet fuel, mentions of bodies falling past windows as people jump from the tower, brief descriptions of wounded soldiers and being bombed, descriptions of bombs dropping on villages, generally bombs, weapons, guns are used and described

I would save for a mature older reader, definitely not below 5th grade without a check in discussion first.