Saints and Misfits Books in Order

The Saints and Misfits books center on Janna Yusuf, an Egyptian and Indian American Muslim teen who feels caught between the different parts of her life. She has her dad's new family, her mom and older brother, friends who know some things about her but not everything, and a mosque community where people have strong ideas about who is good, who belongs, and who should be trusted. Janna has her own system for sorting people into saints, misfits, and monsters.

In Saints and Misfits, that system is tested when Janna is sexually assaulted by a friend's cousin, someone the community sees as deeply religious and beyond question. She is afraid that telling the truth will not only put her at risk of being disbelieved, but will also give people outside her community an excuse to be Islamophobic. At the same time, she is managing a crush on Jeremy, a white non-Muslim classmate, and the everyday uncertainty of being a teenager who does not feel fully at home anywhere.

It is a thoughtful series, but it does not treat hard things lightly.

Janna's voice is candid, sharp, and sometimes very funny. The books stay close to her perspective as she works through anger, shame, family tensions, friendship, faith, and the question of what support can look like after someone has hurt you. Her relationships with her brother Muhammad, her parents, and the people at her mosque all matter because they are complicated, not because they are perfect.

Misfit in Love returns to Janna two years later, after high school, when Muhammad is getting married and the family is gathering for a busy summer celebration. Janna hopes the wedding will give her the right moment to be honest about her feelings for Nuah before college begins. But relatives, new arrivals, shifting family dynamics, and her own uncertainty turn her careful plan into something messier. The book also takes on prejudice and anti-Black racism within Muslim spaces, asking Janna to look more closely at the assumptions she and others carry.

The series moves from trauma and secrecy toward healing, connection, and harder honesty. Start with Saints and Misfits, then continue to Misfit in Love to follow Janna's growth in the order it happens.