You know that feeling when you’re trying to tell your friend why they should read the mind-blowing book you just finished and you have 10,000 reasons why but can’t seem to get them out fast enough? That’s Rebel of the Sands, a fantasy that readers are raving about because of its awesome heroine, desert setting, and blend of adventure, romance, and myth. Here to tell us why she knew this story would win countless hearts is its editor Kendra Levin!

I had to fight with eight other editors to get this book. Okay, it wasn’t a shooting contest in a dark saloon or a faceoff of guns against magic on a windswept desert plain—both of which you can find in Rebel of the Sands—but it got about as heated as fights get in the mostly friendly, polite world of YA publishing. And it ended with some tears and broken hearts afterwards.

I’m telling you this not to brag, but to explain why, from day one, I’ve felt so incredibly fortunate to get to be this book’s editor. Since author Alwyn Hamilton and I often communicate best with each other in gif form, this is how I felt when I found out I got to publish Rebel of the Sands:

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Why the freakout? Because I’d never read anything like Rebel of the Sands before. I’d never visited a place like Miraji, a kingdom that’s 80% Arabian Nights and 20% Wild West, where the sand finds its way under your skin and most girls wind up wed or dead before they make it past their teens. I’d never spent time with a heroine like Amani Al’Hiza, a badass girl whose addictive voice I couldn’t get out of my head. Watching her con, cajole, and shoot her way out of Dustwalk, her dead-end hometown, to escape from a nightmarish arranged marriage had me biting my nails every step of the way while rooting for her:

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And then, when Amani met Jin, I was like:

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He’s rakish, he’s sly, he’s daring. And most importantly, he pulls Amani up onto the back of a mythical horse so the two of them can gallop out of Dustwalk and into the mysterious and surprising heart of the desert she thought she knew.

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And that’s just the beginning. This book is about what happens when someone has been told, all her life, that her voice doesn’t matter, that she has no power and no rights. When you’ve been treated that way since childhood and then finally discover that the world is so much bigger than you ever imagined, and that you’re capable of so much more than anyone was willing to admit…well, no spoilers, but Amani does a lot more than change her hairdo:

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Read the first chapters of Rebel of the Sands here!