A review by mezzarella
A Cave in the Clouds: A Young Woman's Escape from Isis by Badeeah Hassan Ahmed, Susan Elizabeth McClelland

challenging dark tense slow-paced

2.0

A Cave in the Clouds tells of a teenage girl's experiences as her village was captured by ISIS. Her traditions, culture, and stories were woven into this horrifying story, creating a unique perspective of the ISIS terrorist regime in a very personal way. Much of Badeeh's stories and experiences are compressed and handled delicately to aim towards a more Young Adult audience. At times, the story felt stitled or under-explained due to the compressed nature of the story. At other moments, there was great care to add details to help mostly Western readers understand a different cultural language and perspective. Overall, I struggled to properly rate this story. Badeeh's story is certainly an important one, and is her own story which should not have any score or numeric attached to it. At certain times however, I wondered if McClelland dramaticized or purposely excluded details for the sake of making a faster and more engaging story. 

If you know little about how ISIS affected certain populations of people in the Middle East, or have not heard of the Yazidi people, I would highly recommend giving this book a listen. I only wish there were an addition with more details for adult audiences, and more of a direction of what we as a society can do next. 
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