Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2017
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From critically acclaimed author Trish Doller comes a gorgeous, hopeful, and heartbreaking novel, set in Cairo, Egypt, about the barriers we tear down for the people and places we love most.
Caroline Kelly is excited to be spending her summer vacation working at the local amusement park with her best friend, exploring weird Ohio with her boyfriend, and attending soccer camp with the hope she'll be her team's captain in the fall.
But when Caroline's mother is hired to open an eye clinic in Cairo, Egypt, Caroline's plans are upended. Caroline is now expected to spend her summer and her senior year in a foreign country, away from her friends, her home, and everything she's ever known.
With this move, Caroline predicts she'll spend her time navigating crowded streets, eating unfamiliar food, and having terrible bouts of homesickness. But when she finds instead is a culture that surprises her, a city that astounds her, and a charming, unpredictable boy who challenges everything she thought she knew about life, love, and privilege.
"It's a tender story that's both realistic and hopeful." - Publishers Weekly
"A great addition to any library collection, especially where Gayle Forman's Just One Day is popular." - School Library Journal
"The novel is ultimately told from an outsider's perspective, but it questions and challenges stereotypes more often than it reinforces them. Together, Caroline and Adam go to great lengths fighting not only for each other but also for their dreams." - Booklist
"This book is a quick read which will inspire discussions, travel, and perhaps a bit of empathic understanding about people who are different from the reader." - VOYA
"There's a place for unsubtle messaging about white Americans learning to see humanity in the Muslim world, and Caroline - with her likable tattooed father and her mouthwatering descriptions of food - is a pleasant vehicle for the lesson. Pair with Aisha Saeed's Written in the Stars (2013) for an insider point of view of Islam. Fiction 12-16." - Kirkus
This information about In a Perfect World was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Trish Doller is the author of Something Like Normal, which was an ABC New Voices Pick and a finalist for NPR's Best Teen Books of All Time, among many other accolades; Where the Stars Still Shine, which was an Indie Next List Pick; The Devil You Know; and In a Perfect World. She has been a newspaper reporter, radio personality, and bookseller, and lives with her family in Fort Myers, Florida, with a relentlessly optimistic Border collie and a pirate.
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