User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I REALLY, really enjoyed this YA book about an Iranian American teen, Azar, who has a chronic and invisible disability related to childhood colic and vocal chord nodules. An aspiring singer/songwriter in her first year of high school, Azar is pretty much a loner until she forms a band and develops a crush on one of the other members. The disability and demisexuality rep in this book is great and it was also very well done as an audiobook narrated by Alex McKenna. Much thanks to Libro.fm for my ALC of this charming and easily bingeable book!
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars rounded up!
This was such a great coming of age story. Azar is an incredible 14 year old Argentinian-Iranian girl going through her freshmen year of high school who has to take part in speech therapy thanks to a bout of childhood colic that left her with painful throat nodules that makes talking incredibly difficult. Azar’s condition doesn’t stop her from dreaming of being a successful musician.
After a mix up gets Azar into hot water, she finds herself entered in an upcoming battle of the bands, so now Azar has to go from rarely speaking to anyone to opening up to people in order to find some willing band mates.
Azar is such a fantastic character, and I loved watching her find her strengths especially when she starts out believing that her disability is hindrance. I also loved Azar questioning her sexual identity and finding a label that suits her.
When it comes to side characters, I really enjoyed watching Azar navigate the relationships with her mother, her father, her cousin, as well as Eben, the boy she never expected to like. The reader really gets to see Azar thrive and flourish through these relationships.
As a final note, I highly recommend the audio for this one. Alex McKenna does a phenomenal job especially when it comes to the different vocal transitions of Azar.
Thank you to Penguin Teen & PRH Audio for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.
Rating: really liked it
thank you PRH International for sending me an EARC of this book!
5 STARS!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book kind of breaks the distance between middle grade and ya, since it has a very middle grade-y feel but in a great way. I don’t really read middle grade often, but this book was simply delightful (and that is not a word i use often, or lightly).
This book had everything. First off, I had no clue there was chronic illness/disability rep, but it was a constant through the book and it felt so incredibly well done. AND a demisexual main character? Yeah this hit all the boxes for me 😭🫶🏻
The characters felt REAL and GENUINE and were often incredibly relatable. Was the mc frustrating at times? well YEAH she is 14, of course she made decisions or had thoughts that frustrated me because she’s YOUNG AND LEARNING. However she was nothing if not incredible and someone I could relate to and her struggles felt simply SO REAL TO ME. There were also so many important convos here, it was all just so beautifully done.
This book feels important for kids, young teens, and young adults to read and cherish. I feel incredibly special for having the incredible chance to read it 🫶🏻
Rating: really liked it
3.75
This book sort of bridges the gap between YA and middle grade. Azar is 14, and while technically a high schooler, therefore making this YA, she’s so young that the book often reads much more like a middle grade novel. This is neither a good or bad thing, simply something you may want to be aware of before you pick up the book.
This was cute! Azar was a spunky narrator. The cast of friends were diverse and personable. The disability rep was phenomenal. But let’s dive in a little bit deeper, shall we?
Azar on Fire follows 14 year old Azar Rossi, a music loving teen with vocal damage due to severe colic as a baby. When she accidentally damages $1000 worth of school property, her principal gives her an ultimatum—pay the school back, or join the battle of the bands.
Since Azar can’t afford to pay the school back, she must gather a band and enter the competition. Being a performer may be her dream, but being in a band is a lot harder than Azar expected.
The representation in this book is amazing. Azar is both disabled and multiracial (Argentinian, Iranian, and Italian). I believe both of those experiences are #ownvoices, though I’m not sure in the case of the disability rep. The raw and knowledgeable way in which it was written led me to believe that it must have been written by someone who experienced these things, and though there is no author’s note, Olivia Abtahi mentions her ENT doctor in the acknowledgments.
Azar is also demisexual, which we learn through an interaction between her and her cousin Roya. To me, this scene felt really random and out of place. It was never hinted at or mentioned before this, nor was it mentioned again. It was one throw-away scene in the middle of the book that sort of came out of nowhere. Now, I am demi, and I appreciate the rep, but I wish it had been even just a little bit more pervasive throughout the story. The way it felt so awkwardly plugged into the story cheapened the representation for me.
The larger cast of characters is similarly diverse. Roya, Azar’s cousin and best friend, is Iranian. Her bandmates are also all POC, except for Eben, the lead singer and love interest, who is the only cishet white person in the main cast. Matty, the guitarist, is Argentinian and gay, and Nadim, the bassist is an Arab exchange student (I don’t remember the specific country he is from).
The plot and pacing of the book were fine. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I was never super engaged, nor did I ever have the desire to DNF the book. There were a lot of throwaway scenes and things that happened in the book that I thought would become recurring themes later on, but didn’t. They added nothing to the book or the story, and just kind of felt… weirdly inserted. Azar’s demisexuality is one example of this. Another is Azar’s visit to Eben’s house where she learns his mom is a famous internet blogger who posts about him a ton on the internet for views (sometimes in a way that is exploitative and a violation of his privacy). That made me go
what? It was completely out of left field and didn’t mesh with who Eben is as a person. He and Azar never addressed it in conversation. It never comes up again. It was a whole thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about for the rest of the book, waiting for it to become relevant again, only for that to never happen.
Azar goes through some serious character growth throughout the book, and unlike some other aspects of the story, those threads are never lost. One of the reasons I say this book reads a lot like a MG novel is because this character growth, and the accompanying morals, are very heavy handed. We are blatantly told and shown that Azar needs to work on team work. She’s a little bit of a control-freak (relateable lol), and she feels personally attacked every time the band doesn’t want to do exactly what she says or wants. This did get kind of annoying at times, because of how often it was repeatedly shoved down the reader’s throats, and because the way it was written felt very much like a lesson being taught. Which felt very middle grade, to me, for a YA novel. Middle grade books can sometimes have a very strong teaching moral woven in, whereas books for older readers (YA, adult) often have themes that are more subversively present that the reader is expected to take away without having it shoved in their face.
I think that Azar’s growth in accepting herself and her disability was done much more artfully. She steadily and gradually began to accept herself throughout the book, culminating in her realizing she doesn’t need to have fully functional vical cordsin order to play her music and be happy with herself. Unlike the “teamwork is important!” aspect of her character growth, this felt much more natural within the story, and I really enjoyed watching her grow.
This book is definitely worth the read, and I would love to see a true middle grade book from this author someday! I think she’d excel at it.
Rating: really liked it
I thought this was a very quick, easy, and fun read. Though I liked it, I felt that there was something missing. It seemed a little flat to me at times. I think it's still worth the read though because it was still entertaining and the representation is great. The main character is Iranian, has a chronic illness, and is demisexual. I loved all that rep in one character, but I did feel as if the demisexual part of Azar's identity could have been developed a bit more. I felt as if Azar and Eben's relationship was a bit forced. I felt like they didn't have enough meaningful interactions, besides the fact that he is the first person outside her family that she became friends with and talked to at all, for her to develop a crush. I know that every demisexual's experience is different so this could have been enough emotional connection of Azar's character, especially given her lack of social interactions. So that being said, even though the development of her relationship felt a bit off to me, I still appreciated the demisexual representation that I rarely see in books.
This is a sequel to another book but It can be read as a standalone. I hadn't read the first book before reading this because I didn't realize it was a sequel at first but that didn't hinder me from understanding anything that went on. I do know that the main character of the first book was Parvin and she is mentioned in the book but only for a couple of sentences that didn't have any real consequences to the plot.
Overall, I think this is worth the read if you're looking for a quick and easy read with lots of different types of representation.
Rating: really liked it
Thank you to netgalley for my advanced reader copy of this book!
I did not read Perfectly Parvin before jumping into this one, but I didn’t feel like I missed anything.
I really enjoyed this novel. It’s not middle grade so I’d just consider it really early YA. The main character, Azar, is 14. She has some voice health issues that she undergoes surgery and doctors visits for in the book and I thought this was a really interesting and realistic health condition to include in her character.
Things I enjoyed:
- watching Azar make friends
- The creation of Azar’s band
- the cute little romance between Azar and Eben
- Azar’s relationship with her parents
Oh I also liked that Azar and her cousin kind of explore her sexuality and come to the conclusion she might be/probably is demisexual and they define it? I thought this was handled well and mature fore their age.
I really felt like I watched her grow in the course of the novel. It was a cute and quick read overall and I enjoyed it despite it being a younger YA.
Rating: really liked it
Azar on Fire was a great read and felt almost like watching a movie during the story. The plot was fun and the character's passion leaps off the pages.
Rating: really liked it
Thank you to Olivia Abtahi & Penguin Teen for the e-arc!I absolutely adored Olivia's debut Perfectly Parvin, reading a story about a girl so much like myself struggling with her identity as Iranian and trying to love and accept herself was something I had been waiting for all my life.
It's easy to compare a sophomore novel to its predecessor, and
Azar on Fire still has Abtahi's signature humor (I really mean it, she writes HILARIOUS lines), but while the book doesn't discuss belonging as related to your heritage, I related and love it just as much as Perfectly Parvin. Because as much as I loved funny and loud Parvin, it just wasn't me at 14. At 14 I was the quiet kid in school, always scared of what other people thought of me, just like Azar. And while I wasn't quiet because of throat and voice issues, I still saw so much of myself in Azar. I think that's what made me love this book so deeply, how Azar eventually finds her voice and stands proud. The musical elements were a joy to read and the boys in her band were so wholesome, I want to adopt all of them (especially Nadim, bless him). I also love how this was set in the same universe as Perfectly Parvin and how the characters were intertwined in such a realistic way.
Overall I just really loved this book because it, much like Perfectly Parvin, gives a voice to those of us who have often felt underrepresented and for that I will always love Olivia Abtahi's books.
Rating: really liked it
Music-loving Azar's vocal cords are broken. So broken, in fact, that talking is excruciating, so she just doesn't. She doesn't answer questions in class, and she avoids every one of her peers besides her middle schooler cousin, Roya. One day, after a particularly stressful altercation in the halls, Azar scampers off to the janitor's closet to relieve stress in the way she always does: by playing music. Things go sideways, however, when her drumming destroys a thousand dollar's worth of cleaning supplies. Her principal proposes a solution: if Azar enters the local Battle of the Bands on behalf of her school, she'll get off scot-free. Unfortunately, in order to participate in said battle, she'll need a band. Assembling one will require plenty of skills she doesn't have like communication, social charisma, and unending patience. In Azar on Fire, we follow Azar as she assembles together both a band and relationships, all while using her voice as minimally as possible.
Opinion:
When starting this book, I was just the slightest bit apprehensive. Though I can muscle through it, I tend to stray away from books in first person. However, this was quickly proved not to be an issue as Azar is quite literally one of the funniest narrators I've ever read. I doubt that the book would be as good if it was written any way that wasn't directly from Azar. Not only is the book genuinely hilarious, it's packed with personality.
Azar is developed without ambiguity early on, and I love how close we feel to her from the get-go. Her struggles extend further than just her throat and voice, which was lovely to see. She was multifaceted and felt like a real person with real depth. She was relatable and such a joy to follow as a main character!
While I loved Azar, I was upset about the lack of development for the side characters. I'm the kind of person whose character interest spreads way beyond the main character, so it wasn't nice to spend the entire book wishing that we could know more about her bandmates or cousin. While their personalities were somewhat distinct, it felt like a lot of their potential was lost. They're lovely but frustratingly unremarkable.
However, I wouldn't let this stop you from reading the book! Azar is definitely a strong enough main character that it makes up for it, so it's no big deal, overall.
There is a lot of wholesome interactions and good descriptive writing in this book, making it a smooth read overall. This book was bold and fun, and I would recommend it to, honestly, anyone in high school. Even if you're not a music lover or you're perfectly confident in your voice, this book is fun, light, and an overall good time.
Rating: really liked it
Azar, whose parents are of Iranian/Argentinian and Italian descent, has struggled with throat issues since she was a baby, and now they are bad enough to require surgery. It's hard to know how much her dislike of her rough voice and the pain she always endures is responsible for her feeling socially isolated, and how much is introversion and shyness. In her freshman year, however, things are happening. Some are great, like her father planning to move to Northern Virginia, where Azar lives with her young mom (her parents were never married). Some are not so great, like accidentally causing so much damage at school (after an intense bout of frustration at microaggressions) that her principal blackmails her into signing up for the local Battle of the Bands as punishment. Now she has to form a band, and talk to actual people! But maybe it's a chance to get her music out there, at last, even if she can't be the one to sing it. Cautiously Azar steps into the swim of making new friends and forming a band, with some missteps along the way. Will she finally be brave enough to join the world fully, and maybe even find a little romance along the way?
This was great! I loved all the world-building, and Azar's interesting cultural background; it's nice to have a character from multiple cultures, as of course there are many kids like that in schools who probably don't feel seen. Also super nice to see demi-sexual representation, which is uber-rare to see in books, but maybe we will be seeing more and more of people with aspects of their identities that haven't been much noted in books before (I hope!). The book is well-paced, funny, truthful, and sweet. I love how it shows that getting along in a creative group is not easy, and everyone has to compromise. The audiobook was great, since the narrator gave Azar an appropriately husky voice, and imbued it with all the emotions. Recommended for grades 7-9 or so. Thanks to Libro.FM for the free educator's copy of the audiobook.
Rating: really liked it
The sophomore follow up to Perfectly Parvin.
🥁
Azar Rossi is a freshman, starting her second semester, hoping to stay as invisible as she’s been the first part of the year. Azar doesn’t talk much because her vocals were shredded when she had colic as a baby. It hurts to talk and her voice sounds like a smoking bullfrog, but when Azar gets in trouble at school her principal makes a deal with her to play in Battle of the Bands. Azar loves songwriting, but performing? In front of people? No way. But when she hears lacrosse hottie Eben singing, a band begins to form as Azar lets more and more people into her life. After a throat surgery helps with Azar’s pain, she still wonders if being in a band is in her future.
🥁
I absolutely loved Perfectly Parvin so I was thrilled to read the follow up (even though it can be read as a stand alone) and found it just as sweet. I loved the disability and demisexual representation—both of which were new for me to read about in a YA book. Thanks @librofm for the ALC. Great narration! Happy release day!
CW: surgery, hospitalization
Rating: really liked it
An action packed coming of age story of an extremely talented young girl, Azar. As we follow her in her journey of discovery, strength, and resilience.
I was immediately hooked, reading this novel through a 1st person narrative through Azar’s point of view, was extra special. The readers joins her in thoughts, actions, lyric writing.. so talented. It’s precisely her talents that take her on this adventure, and through it she finds friendships, and her voice. Azar, you will find is more relatable in many ways to each of our younger selves in more than one way.
You’ll find yourself rooting for Azar, her journey, and I absolutely didn’t want it to end. I loved reading PERFECTLY PARVIN, and AZAR ON FIRE was just another amazing dose of Olivia Abtahi’s amazing writing.
I highly recommend Azar on Fire! I will be rereading this one, but this time, I’m going to dive into the audiobook, I feel it will have sooooo much to add to the story, and once you read it you’ll know why! Audiobook here I come!!
Rating: really liked it
This is the perfect book to transition from MG to YA.
Azar on Fire is a great coming-of-age novel about a young girl struggling to accept herself and follow her dreams. Like many teenagers, she’s unsure of herself and worried about the things that make her different. However, she starts to come out of her shell when striving to form a band to participate in Battle of the Bands.
This is an easy read (in a good way). I found it easy to follow Azar’s story. At first, I thought it was a little bit of a stretch destroying everything and the principal punishing her by joining BotB, but it’s a work of fiction! So, after reminding myself of that, I was more lenient.
I enjoyed to know the side characters, their stories, and seeing how they interacted with Azar. By the end, it felt like a cozy little friend group.
I felt really proud of all of the things Azar overcame by the end. Overall, this is a feel-good story, and I think that any child nervous about starting high school should read this book.
Thank you PenguinTeen for the eARC!
Rating: really liked it
I didn't love this one as much as I loved (loved, LOVED) Perfectly Parvin, but it was a fun read nevertheless. Abtahi's writing is very witty and engaging as always. Reading about Azar's vocal cord nodules and how that really affected her life was super interesting. The highlight for me was the relationship between Azar and her mother. I adored the banter between them, and seeing Azar get to have great relationships with both her separated parents was lovely to see, and something a lot of younger readers
should see. Speaking of which, this book definitely leans more MG than YA, so I would say the target audience really is those who are just starting to explore outside the MG category.
All in all, a wholesome read.
Rating: really liked it
Thank you Olivia and PRH-teen for sending me an arc. Absolutely adore this darling book. This book will warm your heart and put a smile on your face. You will feel like you're wrapped in your maman bozorg's blanket. If you enjoy tales of self discovery, self acceptance, and self love then this is the book for you. You will root for Azar as she manages the obstacles in her life, learns to navigate her highschool life, and overcomes her fears. The characters are charming, funny, nuanced, complex, and relatable. And I found myself going on a roller coaster of emotions with each chapter. I hope there's a third in this series!
