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The Novel Hermit

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Reviews

REVIEW • Let the Tiles Fall (Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf)

June 27, 2022 Leave a Comment

Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf • April 19, 2022 • Salaam Reads / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

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CATALYST
13 points
noun: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change

When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet.

But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All’s fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it.

As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.

myreview

I received this book for free from Simon & Schuster for Young Readers for review consideration. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

First sentence: “Most people play casual games of Scrabble in their living rooms, squabbling good-naturedly for points over sets their parents bought them in the hopes that it would be “educational.””

Scrabble can be a cut-throat game—especially when you have competitors who are all vying to reign supreme in the Scrabble tournament. They can’t walk away from something that’s important to them, and for Najwa, she can’t—not when there’s a lot of stakes involved.

After being away from that world for a year because of Najwa’s best friend Trina Low’s sudden death, Najwa is ready to come back and honor her best friend by winning the tournament. However, things are thrown into a loop when she starts receiving cryptic messages alluding that Trina’s death may have been on purpose and has to figure out what exactly happened to Trina during her last day by confronting friends and foes.

The Queen of the Tiles is for the word nerds. This book is a love letter to words. You can expect nothing less for a story centered around a competitive Scrabble tournament.

I love the way the words and meanings are woven into the story. Every word has a purpose—from the words that these characters use in competition to the cryptic messages from Trina’s hacked Instagram. Readers will be able to sense the deep appreciation that Hanna Alkaf and her character (especially Najwa) has for words. It makes me want to learn more words and their meaning.

It’s set in Malaysia, and is full of Southeast Asian characters. A lot of the books are set predominantly in the United States, so it’s wonderful to see a book set in Southeast Asia and that characters represent that diversity. You have Najwa, the hijabi Muslim teenager from Malaysia, who makes her return to the Scrabble tournament; Shuba, who is dark-skinned and identifies as they/them; a boy named Ben from Singapore; and many more characters who aren’t clearly defined but it’s implied they’re Southeast Asian.

Not only is the diversity represented in the characters, it’s also with the way Malay is woven into the narrative and the dialogue, which I love. I want to see more of that.

This book does a great job portraying grief. When Trina Low died all of a sudden, Najwa became lost—in her memories, in her grief, in her inability to move on—because what is she without Trina? How do you make sense of the loss when the one person’s who’s been with you since forever is no longer there? It’s painful for people like Najwa. I loved seeing how these characters dealt with their grief, and how their lives have changed without the presence of a person like Trina. You see the desperation in some of them to prove themselves and the lengths they’re willing to go through.

The revelation about Trina toward the end is a bit lackluster. I loved seeing Najwa investigating what happened on the last day Trina was alive, but I didn’t find the revelation satisfying. As much as readers spend so much time reading about these characters grieving and trying to figure out what happened to Trina and the events leading up to her death, everything that happened with the hacker behind Trina’s Instagram account overshadowed it. That hacker mystery pushed aside all the work that Najwa did like Trina’s death was an afterthought. The mood of the book turned from a grieving and trying to come to terms vibe to a completely unhinged and manic vibe that didn’t match the set up.

There is a place for both mysteries, but the speed of how everything was ignored for the hacker mystery baffled me.

Should you read Queen of the Tiles? Yes.

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About Me


I’m Cee. Lover of books + comics. Bookseller. Former teen witch.

The Novel Hermit is written by a daydreamer who loves books and want to share her love with everybody. You will find YA, comics, reviews, discussions, book cover love, and lots of adoration for books. What more can you ask for?

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Disclaimer

All of the books I review either have been purchased by me, borrowed from the library, and sent to me by the publisher (the latter of which I will note).

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