Hollow Fires

Description
This powerful, gripping thriller from a New York Times bestselling author shows the insidious nature of racism, the terrible costs of unearthing hidden truths--and the undeniable power of hope.

Safiya Mirza dreams of becoming a journalist. And one thing she's learned as editor of her school newspaper is that a journalist's job is to find the facts and not let personal biases affect the story. But all that changes the day she finds the body of a murdered boy.

Jawad Ali was fourteen years old when he built a cosplay jetpack that a teacher mistook for a bomb. A jetpack that got him arrested, labeled a terrorist--and eventually killed. But he's more than a dead body, and more than "Bomb Boy." He was a person with a life worth remembering.

Driven by Jawad's haunting voice guiding her throughout her investigation, Safiya seeks to tell the whole truth about the murdered boy and those who killed him because of their hate-based beliefs.

This gripping and powerful book uses an innovative format and lyrical prose to expose the evil that exists in front of us, and the silent complicity of the privileged who create alternative facts to bend the truth to their liking.

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432 pages

Average rating: 8.5

6 RATINGS

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2 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

woodbookclub
May 11, 2023
10/10 stars
This heartfelt and thought-provoking story broke me. Beautifully written and unceasingly compelling, Hollow Fires is already one of my favourite books of all time. A tear-jerker, part murder mystery, part ghost story, part coming-of-age, part social commentary. It addresses so many important and horrific topics (such as racism, classicism, Islamophobia and alt-right propaganda) that it could have gone so wrong so fast. But it didn’t. With an inge...read more
Hazel Lee
Apr 17, 2023
10/10 stars
My heart hurts. This book is a heavy heart breaking story. It made me angry with the world we live in. This story needed to be told.

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