Stereotyping and dialogue was the main issue for me in his debut and that really continues into Kick The Moon. Ilyas’ story was interesting and different but I don’t think it lived up to the greatness of I Am Thunder. I really liked the illustrations from Ilyas’ comics included and would love to see full issues featuring his characters! Thankfully, another ray of light comes courtesy of a cool teacher who encourages Ilyas to take his comic book creativity to the wider world.

They learn to hide parts of themselves if it doesn’t match what they are taught about what makes them a “man”. The pacing was nice and fast, however, I didn’t find myself ever fully connecting with this book or connecting with these characters. This book is an emotional rollercoaster that will have you gasping one moment, fearing the next and then laughing and crying after that. But I also want to see minority characters allowed to be as flawed and imperfect as their white counterparts without judgement.There are so many important issues addressed in this book, they are interwoven really well and feel like a natural part of the story and not forced. Moreover, after another disappointing read, I don’t think I’ll be reading anything else from Khan in the foreseeable future.

There were a few things that should have gotten more attention, the novel felt somewhat rushed but also at times a little too slow. Further to all of that, at the heart of this book is also a story of friendship and I cannot begin to express how much I love books about friendship. She’s a ray of non-conformist sunshine, but also struggling with the pressures of her malicious mates, and an arrogant mother whose do-gooding work is motivated by a belief in her white superiority. GCSE exams looming, his dad wants him to take over the family business and his friends don’t care because their crew, DedManz, is for life.In this book so many of the characters are owned: Ilyas' dad by a warped view of what it is to be a man, his sister by social media followers and society's views of beauty standards, the supporting cast by a desire to be popular, scary, noticed, loved, clever. I definitely recommend this book it shattered a lot of thoughts of high school children and my own biases.

In this novel, his writing style and dialogue have really improved and the plot and pacing were solid throughout. Of course, we all had those teachers at school who never seemed to smile for anyone, but there was literally only one decent teacher – Ms Mughal – whose class also happened to contain the only nice students at the school.Although they come from completely different backgrounds they manage to bond over their mutual love of stories and realise maybe they have more in common than they think.