With every new issue, I got more and more annoyed at how SIMPLY they could all be resolved--if they were just honest with each other! Receiving an ARC of Love from Mecca to Medina was my sign that I ~ made it ~ in the Muslim Bookstagram world!

Zainab and Adam live Kms away forcing Zaynab to hide her difficulties with the intention of finding comfort in Adam when they meet face to face and Adam hopes he is able to provide a livelihood by the time they meet again so Zainab never doubts him. Thank you so much to Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!As one wedge after another drives them apart while they make their way through rites in the holy city, Adam and Zayneb start to was their meeting just an oddity after all? Yes, you'd at some point in the book just want to make Zayneb and Adam to SIT DOWN AND TALK but its also a real representation of what young couples goes through, the anxiety and most of all, how Faith and God brought them together again, as a whole, as they try to find themselves in the midst of their problems and anxieties. Both novels were named best YA books of the year by various media including Entertainment Weekly and Kirkus Reviews . So the story started where Zaydam had to do long distance marriage—Adam in Doha for his art projects and Zayneb in Chicago for her law school. You and your special one will be enveloped in a canopied, curtained, four-poster bed fit for royalty, with an en suite bathroom similarly tastefully decorated.

Zayneb who was my age, Zayneb who looks and dresses like I do, Zayneb who gets a love story in an industry where someone like her is so rare. Also, I was surprised by all the mixing/chilling/"hanging-out" that was happening between the male/female members of the umrah group--even when they were at Makkah. we go from makkah to madinah (sorry i really can't stand the way it's spelled in the book) on an umrah journey, where both adam and zayneb (but prerogatively adam) are hoping to reconnect.The Proudest Blue", her picture book co-authored with Ibtihaj Muhammad, was an instant New York Times Bestseller. And I love all the cameos too, which didn't feel like random inserts but actually helped the characters grow!

I appreciated that eventually they both took the time to reflect on their own mistakes and be vulnerable and humble in the face of those realisations. K. Ali does so much more right in terms of portraying characters whose lives are built upon solid foundations of their Islamic faith, which they believe in and live fully and for themselves, not as an unwanted cultural inheritance or a meaningless identity marker. Then a marvel Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, tracing the hijrah in real life, together. They forget that he said that if two people love each other, they should be married (dispelling any talk of forced marriages).The other problem: A woman organizer in their umrah group who clearly sees Adam as the one who got away vies for his attention in insidiously pious ways while finding ways to ensure Zayneb and Adam are separated the whole trip. If Love From A to Z made me giddy and happy, this book had made me frowning but also just in love with it all.