Much Ado About Nada
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4.6 • 10 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A sparkling second-chance romance inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion...
Nada Syed is stuck. On the cusp of thirty, she’s still living at home with her brothers and parents in the Golden Crescent neighbourhood of Toronto, resolutely ignoring her mother’s unsubtle pleas to get married already. While Nada has a good job as an engineer, it’s a far cry from realizing her start-up dreams for her tech baby, Ask Apa, the app that launched with a whimper instead of a bang because of a double-crossing business partner. Nothing in her life has turned out the way it was supposed to, and Nada feels like a failure. Something needs to change, but the past is holding on too tightly to let her move forward.
Nada’s best friend Haleema is determined to pry her from her shell…and what better place than at the giant annual Muslim conference held downtown, where Nada can finally meet Haleema’s fiancé, Zayn. And did Haleema mention Zayn’s brother Baz will be there?
What Haleema doesn’t know is that Nada and Baz have a past—some of it good, some of it bad and all of it secret. At the conference, that past all comes hurtling at Nada, bringing new complications and a moment of reckoning. Can Nada truly say goodbye to once was or should she hold tight to her dreams and find their new beginnings?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jalaluddin's delightful latest (after Hana Khan Carries On) puts a rom-com spin on Jane Austen's Persuasion. Nada Syed works hard to launch the "Ask Apa" app, designed to offer sisterly advice to Toronto's Muslim community, but a dishonest business partner undermines her efforts, forcing her to return to an engineering job she hates. As she approaches her 30th birthday, Nada is grappling both with this professional disappointment and with mounting parental pressure to find a spouse. To lift her spirits, Nada's best friend, Haleema, takes her to Deen&Dunya, an annual Muslim convention ("like Comic-Con, except with hijabs"), for the weekend. There, Nada will finally meet Haleema's fiancé, Zayn, and grudgingly participate in a speed-dating event. Upon arriving, however, Nada's shocked to learn that Zayn's brother is Baz Haq, whom she's known since grade school and with whom she had an intense on-and-off relationship in college. As Nada navigates the convention, she and Baz try to conceal their romantic history from their loved ones while grappling with their unresolved emotions and simmering sexual tension. Jalaluddin makes their rekindling romance positively swoonworthy, and interfering family members and rich cultural detail add to this romance's power. Austenite or not, readers will be swept away.
