I had to read this for school and didn’t really know what to expect. I guess since I put the bar pretty low it just allowed me to enjoy the book a lot more.
I’ve never really read about this topic but I think this was just a beautiful story that shows how the people involved in the conflict really can’t help it, and that both sides just wanted peace and freedom.

The plottwist left me kind of in a confused state because I didn’t really know what to think. ( )

Seventeen-year-old Tal Levine writes a letter in a bottle expressing her frustrations with the turbulence of the Israelis and Palestinians. She hopes for a Palestinian girl to find the letter and to correspond with her by e-mail. Instead a 20-year-old Palestinian man named Naim finds her bottle on the beach. His correspondence is at first rude and abrupt but he eventually opens up to the more emotional Tal. The two share the same frustrations and each feels they can only share their private thoughts with the other. I found their voices overly dramatic and emotional but that can be typical of passionate-feeling teens. Still the prose and flow of their emails came off as far more articulate than you would expect. Naim's final e-mail was somewhat abrupt and confusing--is he talking about Tal Levine? But a clarifying clue lies on page 85. Useful for readers wishing to understand the Middle East conflict. ( )

As a method of self-defense against increasing Israeli-Palestinian violence, feisty 17-year-old Israeli Tal writes a note and sticks it in a bottle. She asks her brother to throw the bottle in the Gaza sea, with hopes that she’ll meet a Palestinian girl and somehow put a personality to the people she knows must be behind the fence. What she gets is 20-year-old Naim, a scathingly sarcastic, but nice-under-the-surface Palestinian man. The book is a series of emails between the two, and as their understanding of each other grows, so does their affection for one another. This was a really sweet book. It was silly, as are all teenage romances, but actually believable (if you have faith in coincidence). I was surprised while reading because I’d originally thought the author was Israeli, writing for Israeli teens—but the book is written by a French woman who lived in Israel when she was younger. The target audience is therefore teens who do not necessarily know all the background in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is something I appreciated, because I felt like I understood what they were talking about when they mentioned political and historical events. This is a quick, enjoyable read. ( )

Rather (too) short YA-novel about the difference between growing up in Israel and growing up in the Gaza Strip - or more aptly, about the similarities. The two narrators initially think they have nothing in common, but because both are damaged by the strife between their peoples - although in different ways - they grow closer and become friends, even though they have never met. It's a well-written shoe-on-the-other-foot story, and although I found the characters slightly unbelievable (or perhaps just not acting like their purported ages), it was still worth a read. I especially appreciated how both sides got their "say" without condemnation - any blame is worked out between the characters in their communication, which emphasizes the story's overall message of hope. ( )