I no longer have an interest in reviewing this title but would like to thank the publisher and author for the opportunity, it is now far past the publication and archive date. I have awarded 3 stars to keep this review neutral.

I really enjoyed Kick the Moon! This book explores teenagers navigating the competing pressures of school, gangs, family and more and is a gripping, often funny read.

I loved this author's previous book, but didn't end up clicking with this one and ended up DNFing it. I would definitely recommend this to fans of contemporary YA (especially with a social justice edge).

When I first started reading this book, I didn’t know what I was in for. I had no expectations, I’d never read anything by Muhammad before but when I was offered to read it, there was something about it that I couldn’t say no. What I felt and that I was crying wasn’t what I had in mind when I finished this book, would you associate crying with the cover of this book?! I certainly didn’t. This is a killer of a review to write because it’s so hard to put it in words. I need to do Kick the Moon justice! Enjoy!

Ilyas Mian, a British-Pakistani teenager loved superheroes when he was a kid, he loved Superman, he went all out on World Book Day to be him and he knew it was the best costume, but his class mates had other ideas, that being black you can’t be superman and since that day, his dreams were torn away. Years later, Illyas faces the perils of being in a leading gang, the conflict between what is expected of him and what he should do, what’s right by him and his family and that of DedManz. That line blurs when lashes out, putting them in hospital and Ilyias a week’s worth of detention, what he discovers is an unlikely friendship, a kindred spirit of comics and proving to be someone better…

Ilyas’s story is one that will shred you to pieces from when he’s spiralling out of control to when someone(s) start to believe in him. It’s more than just a guy in a gang, but just like any teenager he has a future hen he’s given the chances, the break that he needs too. He found that in his friendship with Kelly, a girl exactly in the same as Ilyas, part of the popular squad of b***** in school when in fact she’s like to create stories, dress in character onesies and speaks like Yoda. The reality is that Ilyas and Kelly have a tough exterior but on the inside they are slowly slipping away from their true selves.

My emotional response is a positive one, at the end I felt I kicked the moon. This book right here is what needs to be read, respresenting gang culture, and heard – defining who you are. It’s inspirational story that a lot of teenagers will relate too, I related to it and working in a school, around your neighbourhood, you see so much and you need this book to know there is hope. The impact of Muhammad’s writing really resonated with me, it really hit me, I felt emotionally kicked in the chest. Not only his writing but the feelings you have for the characters runs deep, their own voices coming through the pages, like Ilyas’s Amma, who really reminds me of my own mum and one particular character I simply admired was Ms Mungal – what an inspiration to her students, everyone needs like a teacher like to believe in you and to get you to express yourself. She is kick-ass.

Muhammad Khan is author that needs to be heard, his second book is powerful literature, of heartfelt and a hopeful messages. Kick the Moon is a YA masterpiece of finding your identity, standing up for what’s right and expressing yourself.

On a side note – I thought Amrit Birdi’s graphic work is phenomenal! It really added a powerful message to Kick the Moon.

Kick The Moon is the highly-awaited follow-up from the YA Book Prize shortlisted author Muhammad Khan. Ilyas is balancing the threat of a local gang and his creative future aspirations with parents who can’t decide on how to raise him and friends who don’t want the best for him. With everything going against him, it seems impossible that he’ll come out on top.

Ilyas’ story really begins when he ends up punching a fellow student for saying horrible things about his mum and of course, Ilyas is the one blamed for acting violently. All of the adults in the book fail to see Ilyas’ side of things and adequately look out for him. His father has a masculinity complex, his older brother has disappeared, his teachers don’t care enough to listen to him and his mother, who is possibly the only person who might hear him out, is too busy to get involved. I understand that as a teen it can be frustrating when you feel like no adults will listen to you or take your side but the fact that Ilyas was shouting so loudly for help and no one was listening went beyond frustration and into the territory of annoyance. This is a trope that makes the characters feel childish. Too helpless to look out for themselves, too young to be heard.

I’ve seen the debates over the writing style in Kick The Moon and while I liked the inclusion of slang and the strong character voice, I found that it was saturated with words that struck out as odd and it became jarring to read. I can’t speak for how realistic it is, but it wasn’t the smoothest reading experience. The pacing was nice and fast, however, I didn’t find myself ever fully connecting with this book or connecting with these characters. Something kept me out of Ilyas’ head, when I was completely there for Muzna. Speaking of Muzna, I thought her cameo was very random and forced which was a shame.

In other places, this became a difficult read because of the subject matter. Violence, rape threats and misogynistic language was rife. As true as it may be, it was particularly triggering and harsh. For a book that seems to be aimed at a young readership, I would want there to be a trigger warning. However, these sickeningly awful conversations do strike a chord and get an emotive response.

The thing is, Kick The Moon is far from a bad book. It definitely fills a gap the book world and it was refreshing to read about a teenager who isn’t full of flowery language. Ilyas’ story was interesting and different but I don’t think it lived up to the greatness of I Am Thunder.

Oh @mkhanauthor, I know it is only February but you have written one of my books of 2019! Loved Ilyas *so* much, friends & family brilliant, social commentary important, & language pitched just right to annoy adult reviewers on Goodreads 🙄 but totally engage teens! #BAME #UKYA https://t.co/CABPJl4zHU

Muhammad Khan’s debut, I Am Thunder, was probably my favourite book of 2018. The timely story of fifteen-year-old Muzna, inspired by a news story about the radicalisation of three Bethnal Green school girls, was always going to be a hard act to follow. Despite that, Kick the Moon may have just topped it. I can’t recommend it enough.

Ilyas is under pressure from everyone. His teachers keep reminding him that his GCSE’s are looming, his dad wants him to join the family business and his mates are more interested in graffiti and girls than getting on in life. His friends call themselves ‘DedManz’, but what starts as a pretend gang becomes something real and Ilyas becomes increasingly uncomfortable as he’s asked to tag on private property and to get a girl naked and film her as part of his ‘initiation’. When Ilyas ends up in detention one day, he finds a kindred spirit in Kelly Matthews, who is fed up with the status quo in her friendship group. But when Imran decides he’s going to seduce Kelly for a bet, Ilyas has to decide whether it’s finally time to stand up to him or if he’s going to lose Kelly’s friendship for good.

I’ve said it before, but Muhammad Khan really gets teenage voices and the huge array of language used by different groups in a school. From “oh my days!” to “totes amazing!”, it’s like they just walked out of the gates of your local school.

Set in South London, Ilyas and the DedManz hang out in an unused abandoned playground, locked up by the council a long time ago but easily entered despite it. We see the harsh reality of peer pressure in action as power hungry Imran starts setting the rules. He’s a bully, but everyone is scared to stand up to him: “No one challenges him. Nobody ever challenges him.”

As the gang becomes more of a reality, we see that for Ilyas standing up to Imran wouldn’t just mean falling to the bottom of the social hierarchy or even putting himself in danger. It would mean putting his family in danger too. I genuinely felt anxious and panicked for Ilyas as he realises the extent of the situation he’s fallen into. He can’t stand up for what’s right without risking everything.

This is a book about racism, sexism, microaggressions, toxic masculinity and bullying. We see a classmate telling Ilyas he can’t dress as Superman on World Book Day because “Superman ain’t no brown boy. You get me?” We see teachers who give out detentions at the mere mention of white privilege because you should “stop seeing colour”. And we see Kelly’s mum dressing up her prejudiced comments as “stimulating discussions”. The message, loud and clear at the end of the book, is about the importance of representation. Had Ilyas had someone to look up to, be it in his real life or in a comic, a film or a book, things might have played out differently.

For me, the real star of this book is Ilyas’ father. We see him go through a real journey – from having a part to play in the toxic masculinity that hounds Ilyas at the start of the book, to really coming through for his son in the end. “So either buy a banana or clear off” might just be my new favourite line.

I said I Am Thunder was a modern classic in the making and I feel just the same about Kick the Moon. I hope we are still reading it in many years to come, but I hope we are reading it saying “I can barely imagine what that must have been like”, with things having changed so much.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

TWs: racism and racial profiling, sexism, revenge porn, physical violence, emotional abuse, and bullying.

This book follows Ilyias, a British-Pakistani teen, who loves drawing superheros and comics, but ends up getting involved with a gang at his school. I read Muhammad Khan's debut, I Am Thunder, last year and I enjoyed it but thought there were issues with stereotyping and dialogue. In this novel, his writing style and dialogue have really improved and the plot and pacing were solid throughout. The characters, however, still play to a lot of stereotypes. Ilyias's Dad is the 'alpha male' father, who insists his son must be traditionally masculine, playing football and hanging out with friends rather than drawing. There are also 'rich' high school girls who only care about appearance, and the tough, bad-boy who has everyone fawning over him.

Not all the characters were quite so archetypal (Ilyias's peers in his maths class and his teacher were all brilliant characters), and Khan does discuss and break down some of these stereotypes, but I felt it could have been done more subtly. Ilyias is at the same time easy to warm to and incredibly frustrating. I wished he would stand up for himself more and make better decisions, but peer pressure often got the better of him. Many times throughout the book, he's the victim of circumstance, but he doesn't see things as being his fault, and therefore doesn't take ownership of his mistakes. But his kindness and love of art did make me warm to him eventually. His friendship with Kelly is one of the highlight of the novel and it was great to see a platonic friendship develop between them that didn't turn into romance.

I enjoyed the use of slang in the dialogue (although I don't know how realistic or representative it is of London teens), as it's something we rarely see in UKYA. The discussions of diversity and privilege were also great to read and the naturalised diversity of the characters was realistic. Sexism and homophobia are also discussed and addressed in the novel (although more could have been done with the latter), and gang culture is touched upon. But I felt that there were a few things missing from the end of the story. The ending itself happens too quickly in my opinion, and I would have liked to have seen who won the art competition, and then another few scenes before the conclusion. We also never get resolutions for Ilyias's Amma and his brother, and we never find out what happens to Noah and Imran after their final scenes. Basically, I would have liked just a few more chapters to round up these lose ends. Other than that, I enjoyed this book a lot and sailed through it.

I received this book from the publisher via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a little while to get into Kick the Moon, but I loved the themes once I did. Ilyas is so heartbreakingly real and lovely! And Kelly is fab too - i really wanted more of her in the book to be honest.

Ilyas is getting in with a bad crowd, and has ended up in a gang and doing things he doesn’t want because he’s scared and this comes across so well. But I also love how Kelly is the reflection of that in her own way - in with the snobby rich white girls and trying to live up to their so called standards. This really showed that anyone can feel like they don’t measure up or that they have to fit in.

I love the descriptions of the comics too, I’m dying to read them but especially the Big Bad Waf. And I had some awesome maths teachers in my time but Ms Mughal sounds AMAZING.

Similar to his first book, one of the things I don’t love is that the language is very much in slang, and it does make it hard to read. HOWEVER. This makes it relatable to so many who wouldn’t normally pick up a book, and I love it for that. Yes, it’s not for me, but it will work for so many others.

I also love that it shows a different take on a religious family and how it’s a part of who Ilyas is, and how he obviously does stand by it. Again something unusual in ya, and something we should see more of.

Overall, I give Kick the Moon 3.5 stars!

Please note the blog post will go live on 24th Jan :)

Muhammad Khan’s second novel is a relevant cautionary tale of self realisation, challenging the trappings created by fear and, most importantly, acknowledging stereotypes of gender and culture before working against them.
My affection for the protagonist hit me fast and hard. Ilyas is a young man I’ve had in my classroom time and time again. He’s a person who is so busy trying to balance what everyone else expects, that he forgets who he really is and what makes him happy.
The journey that Ilyas goes on, in part, is a solo one. However, as a reader, you feel every step he takes. It’s hard to see the assumptions made about him and decisions made for him when you get to hear his own thoughts of the matter.
By the time the reader meets Kelly, they already get a feel for the world in which Ilyas lives and the way in which it goes against his own moral code. Khan is able to explore the complexity of a teens life and how complications don’t always arrive from one social group or source alone.
Kelly’s arrival and Ilyas’ Maths teacher takes the story on a wonderful and heart warming adjacent storyline. It’s here where I feel Khan does his best work; raising issues and challenging stereotypes not only within the story, but to the reader directly.
My favourite aspect of this story is the comic Ilyas and Kelly develop. The glimpses you get about the story will have all readers scrambling to Twitter and beginning Khan to create the comic book proper.