Book Review: The Strongest Heart by Saadia Faruqi

Publisher’s description

From beloved middle grade author Saadia Faruqi comes a poignant exploration of the impact of mental illness on families—and the love and hope that it takes to begin telling a different tale.  

Mo is used to his father’s fits of rage. When Abbu’s moods shake the house, Mo is safe inside his head, with his cherished folktales: The best way to respond is not to engage. Apparently, his mama knows that too—which is why she took a job on the other side of the world, leaving Mo alone with Abbu.

With Mama gone, the two move to Texas to live with Mo’s aunt and cousin, Rayyan. The two boys could not be more different. Rayyan is achievement-driven and factual; Mo is a “bad kid.” Still, there is a lot to like about living in Texas. Sundays at the mosque are better than he’d expected. And Rayyan and his aunt become a real family to Mo.

But even in a warm home and school where he begins to see a future for himself, Mo knows that the monster within his father can break out and destroy their fragile peace at any moment…

Amanda’s thoughts

This is not an easy read. Mo’s father’s generally untreated mental illness is extremely challenging for Mo to live with. But thank goodness as the story goes on, Mo finds support, love, help, understanding, and outlets for his pain.

13-year-old Pakistani American Mo and his dad move from Queens, New York to Houston, Texas, where they will live with Mo’s aunt and cousin, Rayyan. Mo’s dad has severe paranoid schizophrenia and is not medicated at this time or attending any of his appointments. Mo thinks of him as a monster. His mother is out of the country on a fellowship (and seems to have found it totally fine to just leave Mo with a super unstable parent). Mo is pretty used to being on his own, care-wise, so it’s a whole new world to have a loving aunt and a cousin who quickly feels like a brother (both boys are in 8th grade). Mo has built up a facade of being hard and jaded, a bad boy who doesn’t care about anything. It’s a protective shell, of course, but it’s one he works hard to believe. After all, it’s easier than feeling his feelings, than really letting anyone know what he has been through. He thinks acting tough and unbothered is strong. His father has often been neglectful and verbally abusive to Mo, who has had to just adapt to taking care of himself and putting up with whatever his dad says to him.

It’s eye-opening to Mo to see his cousin and aunt so loving, so respectful. They have suffered their own loss, with his uncle having been murdered a few years ago in a gas station shooting. He’s seeing other ways to interact, other expectations. And, having always been a non-religious Muslim because of his father’s views on religion, he’s also learning new ways to think about faith and the community that can be found there thanks to his new family. It’s hard for Mo to feel much sympathy for his dad, to remember that he’s sick. Mental illness comes in all shapes and forms. Sometimes it’s well-controlled and treated and doesn’t affect day-to-day life in significant ways. But it can also look like what his father is going through—untreated, extremely challenging, and something that makes him truly unable to care for his child. He can’t even care appropriately for himself. It’s something that as an adult reader, as someone not living through it, we can look at with a sympathetic eye. But for Mo, who only knows this, who feels so frustrated and abandoned and (when he’s not faking strong) hurt, he just feels angry. He can’t help but blame his father for who he is, for how he acts.

Things begin to change for him as he grows closer to his aunt and cousin. He also meets an uncle (his mom’s brother) he never knew about. He begins to volunteer at the Islamic center, teaching art to children. He’s surprised to find painting very therapeutic. He learns to care more about school, thanks to his extremely driven cousin and a teacher he connects with. He begins to be more open, honest, and vulnerable. His father gets the help he so desperately needs, thanks to his aunt’s interventions. None of it erases the horrors he has been through or makes it seem like things will magically be better from here on out. As it says in the epilogue, this isn’t some kind of happily ever after story. “At most, it’s a story that ends in ‘They tried their best.'” That’s realistic. That’s how most stories in life go, if we’re honest. Things are hard. Things are definitely not okay. But all we can do is try our best, even if it takes a long time to get there. This nuanced look at life with a mentally ill parent shows that change and hope are possible, but that one kid can’t achieve those things on his own, nor should he have to. Through support, community, connection, and honesty, readers see that hope can be found and help is out there. A moving portrayal of mental illness and how it affects a family made more moving by Faruqi’s note that the story is based on her own experiences. A tough read but an important one.

Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher

ISBN-13: 9780063115859
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 03/04/2025
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

Filed under: Book Reviews