Written in the Stars
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"A wonderfully complex love story unlike any you’ve read before. Saeed has given a novel that is both entertaining and important.”—Matt de la Peña, New York Times bestselling author
This heart-wrenching novel explores what it is like to be thrust into an unwanted marriage. Has Naila’s fate been written in the stars? Or can she still make her own destiny?
Naila’s conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up—but they will choose her husband. Following their cultural tradition, they will plan an arranged marriage for her. And until then, dating—even friendship with a boy—is forbidden. When Naila breaks their rule by falling in love with Saif, her parents are livid. Convinced she has forgotten who she truly is, they travel to Pakistan to visit relatives and explore their roots. But Naila’s vacation turns into a nightmare when she learns that plans have changed—her parents have found her a husband and they want her to marry him, now! Despite her greatest efforts, Naila is aghast to find herself cut off from everything and everyone she once knew. Her only hope of escape is Saif . . . if he can find her before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raised in a conservative Pakistani immigrant family, 17-year-old Naila has been an obedient daughter for most of her life. However, her American education has exposed her to her classmates' comparative freedom and allowed her to spend time and fall in love with Saif, a Pakistani boy whose family has been ostracized from their community. Her parents' expectations are clear: "You can choose what you want to be when you grow up, the types of shoes you want to buy.... But your husband, that's different." After Naila's transgression is discovered, she is whisked back to Pakistan and forced into an arranged marriage. In her YA debut, attorney and writer Saeed, a contributor to the collection Love, InshAllah, movingly conveys the intense cultural pressure that motivates Naila's parents and the heartbreaking betrayal Naila feels as she is deprived of her rights, cut off from the outside world, and threatened with shame and death. Saeed includes resources for those who, like Saif's family, wish to help real-life Nailas, in this wrenching but hopeful story. Ages 14 up.
