After reading the first third of this book, I had set my rating at 3 stars. The characters seemed stereotypical, especially the "villains." Fortunately, I continued reading it and did a total 180. Though there were still a few small things that bugged me (e.g., the italicized Arabic goes away about halfway through the book, for some reason), Courtney provided more depth into Allie's motivations and, more impressively, the other characters as they realize and work to correct their own biases.

Overall, this is an important book; one only has to look at reviews of it here on Goodreads-- reviews by people who declare that they have not and will not read the book because they completely disagree and reject Islam--to realize this. It's rare to find a book that follows a character who is fully exploring her religious and cultural identity without it being black-and-white. Courtney does a great job of highlighting the nuances of this exploration and calling attention to the fact that religious compulsion takes on many forms--and that not everyone will be fully adherent or supportive, but they won't completely demonize what they fully understand either. (Unless they're a jerk, of course. Jerks are terrible.)