Much Ado About Nada

 Much Ado About Nada- Uzma Jalaluddin

Penguin Random House

Release Date: June 13, 2023

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: 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 the 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 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 back at Nada, bringing new complications and a moment of reckoning. Can she truly say goodbye to what once was, or should she hold tight to her dreams and find their new beginnings?

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In Uzma Jalaluddin's retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion (with a Canadian Muslim twist) Nada is stuck in the rut of family life and work. Her big idea app was a flop because her business partner stole her idea, Nada retreated into her shell and hasn't come out since. Her best friend Haleema drags her to a giant Muslim conference to meet Haleema's fiancé Zayn and hopes to set Nada up with Zayn's brother Baz. The only problem is that Baz and Nada have a history that Haleema doesn't know about. As the past is resurrected, Nada knows she has to decide: say goodbye to past dreams of love or take a chance and confront her fears?

Persuasion is one of my favorite Jane Austen books, and it is a tough one for a retelling- even more so than most second-chance romances. Bringing it into the modern world is even tougher. Uzma Jalaluddin did a really good job transferring this classic love story to modern-day Toronto, with the tension between generations in Toronto's South Asian Muslim immigrant community standing in for Austen's Regency rules. 

I loved how Jalaluddin made all of her characters, not just Nada, complex. There was a lot going on for each of them, and she did a good job of taking characters that at first seemed basic, then you get an insight part way through that changes how you look at all of their interactions. Nada gets to really go through a lot in this book and I felt like I watched her grow as a person as she fought through her sense of loss and betrayal over her app and losing Baz at the same time- and still feeling that years later but now seeing a second chance and being ready to fight for it. 

I liked the flashbacks to Nada and Baz in college, seeing them fall in love and getting some sense of why they kept it a secret, though I felt like they fell into the classic rut of not communicating or listening to each other. Both of them made mistakes, but it seemed like Nada was the only one willing to work to maybe change the present. While it would have ruined the book to get both viewpoints along the way, there were times I wished I knew what Baz was thinking, or knowing that he was working to change himself as well. Surprisingly, Baz was one of the characters that came off as flat for me.

Overall I enjoyed this book, though the pacing dragged occasionally. I love how Jalaluddin brings the reader into the South Asian Muslim community of her characters without feeling like she has to overexplain the community for her non-Muslim readers. We absorb and are absorbed by the community and Jalaluddin's beautiful writing.

Despite the many times I've referenced Jane Austen and Persuasion here, you don't have to have read it to enjoy this retelling.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review