Hala, a Pakistani-American teenager girl in her final year of high school is cautious with her words, but avidly curious with her eyes and ears. Floating in a limbo between two cultures, she's gently pulling back from her Muslim faith and tentatively testing her crush on Jesse, a tousled blond classmate with a sensitive soul. She's a fascinating paradox, at once subdued and adventurous: One moment, she's meekly enduring the affectionate nagging of her anxious mother Eram; the next, she's racing through their Chicago suburb on her skateboard. —New York Times