Thank you NetGalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is incredibly genuine all the way though and I loved every single page. It made me emotional and warm, happy and sad, and it made me laugh out loud many times. 

One of the main themes that this book emphasises is how important it is to be yourself, but how difficult this may be and how some people will find it infinitely harder than others. Amir struggles with this throughout the book and it causes him to literally flee to another country where he still struggles with this. He goes on a long journey, trying to reconcile his identities, his families, and figure out how to be true to himself.

It also really highlighted the prejudices that people face simply for being brown and Muslim as the whole story is based around Amir and his family talking to US Customs after they had a small argument on a plane. Amir's mother, who desperately tried to deescalate the whole situation, and Amir's father, who had been in this situation before, in particular showed the fears that Muslims face.

I will never know the fears that they face in the airport or, as a white queer women, the particular fears that Amir faces coming out to his Muslim family, and I think it's important that we acknowledge this and use our privilege positively. It's incredibly important and vital for teenagers in Amir's position to have access to hopeful stories like this to show them things can go better than they are expecting and that, even if they don't, you can always find a family who will accept you for you. 

The family that Amir finds is flawed and brings it's own ups and downs, as all families are and do, but it is overall a great group that helps Amir along his journey and helps him to see he will always have people on his side. I particularly loved Neil and Valerio for their authenticity and encouragement. The group in general really reminded me of Les Amis de L'ABC from Les Mis which I loved.

Overall, this was a fantastic book and I can't wait for it to come out later this year so that more people can read it. It deals with a lot of important topics and themes, but Ahmadi handles them all with care and writes a deeply genuine, hopeful and hilarious book.

5* Really well written. Funny, sad, happy and affirming - it's a tale for all.

This, refreshingly, is a tale with drama where the drama's not at all faux - I think it helps that the author's gay himself and from an ethnic background where a lot of what he's written might have grains of a personal truth in it.

I liked that it was told from Amir's voice, but that the voices of his mother, father and sister - all trying to figure out where he is and why he's done a flit (in their eyes, as he once 'ran away' from home - overnight) - punctuate the tale. I loved his sister's support and also her resentment that he didn't tell her what was up, and I loved her sleuthing on social media that led to her figuring out where he was and what he was doing. I loved his mother's conflict in the sense that I could see how torn she was - protecting her son from future pain as a gay ethnic man, and a Muslim at that, in today's USA; protecting her innocent young daughter from having her eyes exposed to too much too soon; and her trying to temper her husband, because of how he'd reacted before, and because of his toxic masculinity, which I felt wasn't an affectation, but to do with his past, his experiences, his worries as a father and as a Muslim man who's seen prejudice in his time in the USA. The tale flowed and felt natural and the only thing I didn't like was that Amir encountered a group of slightly older gay men in Rome, all of whom took him under their wing, and he wasn't honest with them about his reasons for being in Rome. He kind of did have his reasons, but he told a version of the truth he'd anticipated - perhaps not wrongly - but hadn't actually experienced due to his doing a flit. Still, though, this is one of the best, sweetest, funniest and most touching books I've read in a while. If you enjoy this, I'd highly recommend The Story of Us, a tale by Barbara Elsborg, which resonated more with me due to my being a Brit of an ethnic minority, and because the actual events of the tale that felt more realistic than Amir's, with all due respect to Arvin Ahmadi's book.

ARC courtesy of Bonnier Books/Hot Key Books and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.

How It All Blew Up is a fun, powerful YA novel about being your authentic self and also getting the chance to feel accepted. When eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi finds himself in an airport interrogation room, with his dad, mum and younger sister in other rooms, he starts telling a story the officer probably wasn't expecting. The tale of how his summer after graduation suddenly went very differently, as he ran away from his American home to Rome to avoid a classmate blackmailing him about his sexuality and threatening to out him to his parents. In Rome, Amir found a group of older gay friends, old cultural references, new food, the Sistine Chapel, and some romance and drama, but eventually, he would have to face up to what he ran away from: his family.

The way the narrative is told is very clever, with Amir's story described by him, but intercut by his family members' explanations of how events unfolded from their side, not knowing where he was or why he had gone at first. It combines realities of being Muslim in modern America with the fun, life-affirming story of Amir getting to escape in Rome and discover new things, with a real focus on his need to have gay friends and find people he could talk and laugh and party with. The focus of the book is on Amir himself, and various connections with different people including his family, new friends, and past and present love interests, and it really shines through that what is important is that he works out these relationships and who he is, without romance being the most important thing.

Arvin Ahmadi combines meaningful points about coming out to your family, cultural expectations, and the treatment of Muslim people in airports with a summery romp of self-discovery around Rome in this joyful YA novel about possibility and acceptance.

How It All Blew Up goes straight for your heart and doesn't let go. It breaks and mends it, in this original and thought provoking novel that many young people will be able to relate to. It's a book that will resonate with many and is essential reading.