#uzma jalaluddin

[the-final-sentence]

Alhamdulilah.

Uzma Jalaluddin, from Ayesha at Last

[fated-mates]

You can get Uzma Jalaluddin's HANA KHAN CARRIES ON for $3 right now. It's a total delight. So much so that we did a deep dive in season four.

[52booksproject]

Book 51: Ayesha at Last

Random letters UZ led to Uzma Jalaluddin. I decided to go with her first book Ayesha at Last, which is a Pride and Prejudice retelling with Indian Muslims in Canada. Quite the premise!

Ayesha is a poet trying to pursue teaching from a semi-poor family living partially off her rich uncle's generosity. Khalid is the son of a rich family who is so fundamentalist he won't touch a woman, even to shake hands in a business setting.

They meet and through a series of mishaps Khalid judges Ayesha to be not the kind of girl he'd like to associate with and Ayesha finds Khalid a stuck up fundamentalist. But they end up growing closer through another series of mishaps, and are a regular Lizzy and Mr. Darcy.

It's not a perfect parallel to P&P, as in it has its own personality, but it lampshades it from the very beginning and fits pretty well throughout. The best character is Masood, a life coach who courts first Ayesha's cousin Hafsa, then when rejected tries for Ayesha.

My only real problem with the book is Kahilid, Mr. Darcy, refusing to shake hands with women, but shaking hands with men. I get that he feels it's against his religion to touch a strange woman, but this is Canada. He should be shaking hands with *nobody* rather than just one gender. It reminded me of Mike Pence eating alone only with men. Both or neither is right, one but not another is wrong. I don't want to come across as Sheila, the token prejudiced asshole, but I think that's a fair solution. Also that and depicting a post-Roe (granted in Canada) abortion as dangerous.

BEST LINE: "An ice-cream truck slowly cruised the street, a Pied Piper parting children from their allowance money."

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK: Do you need another Pride and Prejudice take in your life? Yes, you do. It's funny and clever.

ART PROJECT:

This is kinda what I pictured Khalid like in my head, minus a reference pic it looks uncanny valley, but there it is.

[marvelousgeeks]

Jane Austen’s Persuasion might be the most complex book to adapt to contemporary times. As a novel, not only is much based on Regency customs but also miscommunication that is utterly understandable given the time period. And in general, second chance tends to be a tricky trope for modern audiences. There’s already a ton of pressure on why they broke up and whether readers could root for them to get back together. (It couldn’t be me, though, because second chance romances will forever be my favorite trope.) Still, I get where readers could draw complaints. However, it’s impossible to think that could be the case with Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin because the novel is brilliant from beginning to end—a perfect adaptation.

I first read Jalaluddin’s Ayesha at Last in grad school and was blown away by the lush prose that took us on engaging character journeys while simultaneously giving readers insight into Muslim beliefs and upbringings. So, I had a feeling Much Ado About Nada would hit just as hard, and I am happy to admit it even exceeded my expectations. 

Continue Reading

[safirefire]

Anyone But You Fans

Did you like Anyone But You? Or were you interested in the concept but found it a little lacking? Try Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin, a really cute modern retelling of Much Ado About Nothing set in a Canadian Muslim community which I thoroughly enjoyed

[thatwritererinoriordan]

[desdasiwrites]

[dkehoe]

This Chick Read: Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin

Nada Syed’s life has not gone as she’d thought, still living at home with her family in the Golden Crescent neighborhood of Toronto, her start-up company Ask-Apa launched with a fizzle due to a shady business partner, and her best friend Haleema is getting married. Meeting Haleema’s fiancé Zayn for the first time at his family’s convention is off to a rocky start when she runs into his brother…

[haveyoureadthispoll]

A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. She lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is always being reminded that her flighty younger cousin, Hafsa, is close to rejecting her one hundredth marriage proposal. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn't want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid, who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. She is irritatingly attracted to someone who looks down on her choices and who dresses like he belongs in the seventh century. When a surprise engagement is announced between Khalid and Hafsa, Ayesha is torn between how she feels about the straightforward Khalid and the unsettling new gossip she hears about his family. Looking into the rumors, she finds she has to deal with not only what she discovers about Khalid, but also the truth she realizes about herself.

[betterbooksandthings]

“What is a closed door romance? Like any fan community, romance has phrases and lingo that have developed over time for fans to talk to other fans. We have romancelandia (referring to the collective of romance readers and writers), HEA/HFN (happily ever after/ happy for now), and have mostly co-opted the use of tropes in both book marketing and slang. Closed door romance is the informative slang term used by romance readers and writers that I am breaking down today.“

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

😄 Things Worth Smiling About

🦇 Good afternoon, bookish bats! I hope the weather is starting to cool down where you are--a reminder that fall is incoming. We finally decorated the house for the season, and I can't stop smiling at all the bats, black cats (including the living ones), and pumpkin spice-scented nonsense we have everywhere.

❓QOTD Name three things that make you smile.

✨ For me. it’s: 💜 ARC approval emails from Netgalley 💜 Receiving books in the mail 💜 Kitty cuddles 💜 Spending time with bae 💜 Cinnamon & honey anything 💜 That first cup of coffee 💜 Cute baby bats 💜 Cracking open a fresh journal 💜 The sound of my typewriter 💜 Receiving unexpected packages 💜 Essential oils 💜 Neon lights 💜 The Owl House theme song 💜 Handwritten letters from bae

[greenconverses]

This might be a silly question but do you enjoy contemporary romance novels? I love historical romance novels but for some reason I find contemporary romance really cringe. Are there certain authors you think always have good stories? ( like the way I know anything you write will always be a banger). I want to expand outside of historical romance but not sure where would be a good start that I would also enjoy. (And I know I won’t know if a book is bad or good until I read it but I can’t finish bad books I just read the last chapter to know how it ends and then return it to the library so would rather avoid this lol)

Oh, I definitely struggle to find contemporary romances I like! I'm reading way more of them than I was a few years ago, but historical is still my go-to.

It's probably because I prefer third person POVs and historical is absolutely dominated by third person. First person can be so great in the hands of a good author, but contemporary is full of really shitty first person, especially now that BookTok has a chokehold on the romance genre. (Don't even talk to me about the trend of using first person on back of the book blurbs, I want to set it ON FIRE.)

I'm also very distrustful of the overall quality of contemp romances. I've been burned way more often by crappy contemp than I have with historicals. I think the standards are just higher with historicals because authors want to sound/be time period accurate, so they end up doing research and being a bit more thorough with the entire writing process. Obviously shitty historicals do exist and the "wallpaper" trend of just plopping modern characters down in Regency/Victorian setting is whole other thing, but by and large, the style, standards, and tropes of historicals just serve me better as a romance reader.

When I'm looking for contemp authors, I look for some of those same qualities: third person POV, great attention to detail, strong character voice, actual romantic tension, satisfying emotional arcs. I also look for authors who implicitly understand what romance is as a genre.

BookTok contemp authors love ticking off romance trope boxes, but most of them don't do the work required to make that trope sing or deeply misunderstand the appeal of said tropes outside of fan fic. The same thing happens with ~spicy books. There's so much of a focus on sex/being sexy versus the romance leading up to sex that you get these really bad cardboard sex scenes that, again, do nothing but check boxes and fail to further the romance.

I can rant about BookTok ruining contemp romance for longer, but that's not that you asked for! Contemporary authors I'd recommend you try: Talia Hibbert, Emily Henry, Ashley Poston, Roni Loren, Alisha Rai, Amy Lea, Rachel Lynn Solomon, Ashley Blake Herring, Alison Cochrun, Uzma Jalaluddin, Julia London, Alyssa Cole, Helen Hoang, and of course, my forever favorite, my GOAT, Meg Cabot.

[read-alert]

I've slowly been making my way through some Pride and Prejudice retellings, and I thought I'd ask for recommendations for more! What are your guys' favorite retellings? I'm partial to ones that are queer and that are more kind to the other three sisters, but those aren't necessary elements. I would absolutely prefer adult or new adult over YA though.

I've already read Pride by Ibi Zoboi, Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg, and Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa. And my TBR includes:

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding

Pride/Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers by Ann Herendeen

A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

[ashleybenlove]

Books I read in October:

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett – Oct 4

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab – Oct 5

Much Ado about Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin – Oct 8

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl by Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum – Oct 9

Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe by Harry Cliff – Oct 12

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson – Oct 13

The Power by Naomi Alderman – Oct 14

Conceal, Don't Feel: A Twisted Tale by Jen Calonita – Oct 15

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose – Oct 20

How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow – Oct 20

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez – Oct 25

Once Persuaded, Twice Shy by Melodie Edwards – Oct 27

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal – Oct 30

FYI: I read not one but two Persuasion retellings (Much Ado about Nada; Once Persuaded, Twice Shy) this month! (Both set in Canada!)

[suseagull04]

24 Reads in 24

Thanks @read-and-write- for the tag!

I have no idea if I'll reach 24 books this year (although I surpassed my goal last year, so you never know!) But if I had to make a list... Some of these are rereads to prep for the next book in the series, and most of these will be coming straight from my Goodreads list.

1. House of Earth and Blood- Sarah J. Maas (reread to prep for #3, currently reading)

2. House of Sky and Breath- Sarah J. Maas (reread to prep for #3)

3. House of Flame and Shadow- Sarah J. Maas New at the end of this month, I'm excited!!!!

4. In a Holidaze- Christina Lauren this one might not happen, I suspect I'll need to be in just the right mood for this.

5. Gwen & Art Are Not in Love- Lex Croucher

6. Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail- Ashley Herring Blake

7. Delilah Green Doesn't Care- Ashley Herring Blake

8. Something Wild and Wonderful- Anita Kelly

9. Love & Other Disasters- Anita Kelly

10. Boyfriend Material- Alexis Hall

11. One Last Stop- Casey McQuiston

12. The Charm Offensive- Allison Cochrun

13. Fourth Wing- Rebecca Yarros

14. If the Shoe Fits- Julie Murphy

15. Red Queen- Victoria Aveyard

16. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches- Sangu Mandanma

17. The League of Gentlewomen Witches- India Holton

18. Not the Witch You Wed- April Asher

19. Not Your Ex's Hexes- April Asher

20. One More Day- Emma Heatherington

21. Ayesha at Last- Uzma Jalaluddin

22. Lioness Arising- Lisa Bevere

23. In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day- Mark Batterson (currently reading)

24. This might be cheating, but all of the books on my shelf at home that I haven't read!

Bonus shout-out to all the RWRB fics I want to read!!

No pressure tagging @heybuddy-drabbles @daisymae-12 @myheartalivewrites @zwiazdziarka @inexplicablymine @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @happiness-of-the-pursuit @firenati0n @welcometololaland and anyone else who wants to play!

[belle-keys]

Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag, even though it’s July

Number of books read so far in 2023: 40.

Favorite book so far: The Laughter by Sonora Jha and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

Best sequel so far: Chain of Thorns by Cassandra Clare.

Recent 2023 release you want to read but haven’t as yet: Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong and Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Most anticipated release for the second half of 2022: A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid.

Biggest disappointment so far: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, because the writing was fun and fast-paced but there’s way too much “God Bless America” in there for me to positively vibe with the book.

Biggest surprise so far: The Foxglove King by Hannah F. Whitten because I don’t typically like fantasy-romance booktokish books but this had me in a chokehold.

Favorite new author (debut, or new to you): Mario Vargas Llosa and Octavio Paz.

Newest fictional crush: Bastian from The Foxglove King, because I feel ways about him that are concerning to feminism.

Newest favorite character: Jane from Jane Eyre, as I haven’t felt such deep sympathy and respect for a literary character like that in ages.

Book that made you cry: Not proper tears, but the last 200 pages of Chain of Thorns had me on the cusp.

Book that made you happy: Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin because the book feels like a warm hug and is my current comfort novel.

Most beautiful book you acquired so far: Got the Fairyloot edition of The Aventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shanon Chakraborty and it’s absolutely stunning, like it had me gagged. I was kinda scared to touch it.

Books you need to read before 2023 is up: A Study in Drowning, The Book that Wouldn’t Burn, Sword Catcher, Big Swiss, Penance, Heir to the Darkness, Our Wives Under the Sea

I��m tagging anyone that sees this and wants to do it! My Goodreads and Instagram are in my bio for anyone who’s interested in being buddies on there and is new to this blog!