And it was all handled well and in a way that made you desperate for more of it and more stories like it. This story deals with a lot of hard topics such as two groups fighting against each other, the violence that indigenous people often face, mental illness, grief, and a lot more. I’m desperate now to read more stories like this and can’t seem to find any that comes close to this important story. It was probably one of my favorite books in a long time and reminded me why I love historical fiction. I had heard a lot of good about this book and it did not disappoint.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.īut there are things that Melati can’t protect her mother from.

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. A music-loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this heart-pounding literary debut.

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