Alma's Loyalty

by Amra Pajalic

Overview

Alma's perfect family is fractured when her father finds out he has a long-lost daughter from his first marriage. When his overtures are rebuffed, it's up to Alma to bring her new-found sister, Sabiha, into the family fold.

Now Alma is caught between family loyalties: her feuding parents, the brother she grew up with and the sister she just met, the new friends she made who are conflicted in their loyalties between her and Sabiha. Can Alma maintain the role of the perfect daughter and navigate the competing loyalties in her life?

'Amra Pajalić writes with such honesty every young adult will empathise with her... While dealing with some ordinary "stuff" Pajalic's observations are sincere and often hilarious.' BENDIGO ADVERTISER

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781922871190
Publisher:	Amra Pajalic
Publication date:	10/22/2022
Series:	Sassy Saints , #2
Edition description:	Large Type
Pages:	710
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.69(d)

About the Author

Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. Her short story collection The Cuckoo's Song (Pishukin Press) features previously published and prize-winning stories. Her debut novel The Good Daughter, won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award, now re-released as Sabiha's Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022) as the first book in the Sassy Saints Series. The second book is Alma's Loyalty (Pishukin Press, 2022).Her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award. The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of the year awards. She works as a high school teacher and is completing her PhD at LaTrobe.Amra Pajalić publishes her dark fiction using pen name A. P. Pajalic. She also publishes romance novels under the pen name Mae Archer. Her website is www.amrapajalic.com/

Editorial Reviews

2023-01-09
In Pajalić’s high school YA drama, a Bosnian girl in Australia attends a new school where she tries to befriend the sister she didn’t know she had.

Alma Omerović experiences the “most traumatic day” of her 15 years of life—she learns that her father, Esad, had a daughter no one in the family knew about (including Esad himself). In an effort to get to know this daughter, Sabiha, Esad moves the family from Hobart to Melbourne and enrolls Alma in the same school as his estranged daughter. Sabiha grew up under the assumption that Esad had abandoned her and her mother, and she spurns his affections as well as Alma’s attempts to establish a sibling bond with her. Alma slowly makes some headway into Sabiha’s group of friends—they call themselves the “Sassy Saints,” a coinage typical of author Pajalić’s thoroughly predictable montage of adolescent tropes. Alma laments her lonely experience as the outsider: “Every day was like walking underwater and fighting to get to the surface for a breath. There were currents and undertows and I constantly wished that I’d been able to stay in my old school and avoid the drama.” Meanwhile, Alma begins a romantic relationship with older student Alex Payne, a smooth talker with a “sparkling smile” who is either a sweet boyfriend or an exploitive scoundrel. The author hits all the big issues of adolescent life—religious bigotry and racism, sexual identity, the perils of sexting, and the pressure to cross the threshold from virginity into sexual maturity. It’s hard to ignore the feeling of a checklist being diligently completed here. Yet the author does perceptively capture the sneaking suspicion among teens that their adult superiors are monstrously hypocritical, a revelation encountered as a betrayal. Still, much of the book is a rehash of familiar themes, lacking freshness and vivacity.

Although Pajalić bravely deals with some serious adolescent issues, the book lacks an original angle on teen drama.

Kirkus Reviews