Ayesha At Last

Ayesha At Last- Uzma Jalaluddin
Berkley/Penguin Random House
Release Date: June 4, 2019

Rating:
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Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead! 

Synopsis: 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.

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In this latest retelling of Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice, Ayesha is trying to get her life on track  and balance a modern Muslim life with her extended family's pressure to marry traditionally.  Khalid is trying to balance his conservative beliefs and his overbearing mother's need to run everything with pressure from workplace friends and enemies to change who and what he is.  When they meet, Ayesha and Khalid are attracted, but also dislike each other.  Assumptions are made, identities are mistaken, and Ayesha and Khalid both have to face some uncomfortable truths before they can choose their paths forward.

 Ayesha is easily relatable and lovable. She is a woman who sees herself balancing between two worlds and cultures, modern and traditional, Eastern and Western.  She has dreams of traveling and writing poetry but is practical enough to get a job she doesn't like as a substitute teacher for the sake of her family.  Always compared to her spoiled and flighty younger cousin Hafsa, Ayesha is expected to do the right thing, be sensible, and no one in the family seems to wonder if she is ever lonely or regrets giving up her dreams.  Khalid is harder to get to know- both for us as the reader and for other characters.  He is quiet, lacks all social skills, and when he does speak he inevitable puts his foot in his mouth.  Instead of being the proud Darcy who knows himself and rules his world, Khalid has been shaped by his conservative, overbearing mother and his only act of rebellion seems to have been to stay in touch with his older sister after she is banished by their mother.  When he stops thinking and just acts he can be sweet and charming, and that is the man Ayesha slowly begins to fall for.  I really liked watching both characters slowly grow and try to find themselves, and there are some great moments of realization that happiness comes from figuring out who you are, and can't rely on anyone else.

Ayesha At Last introduces the reader to the colorful (and often chaotic) world of large Indian Muslim families. Nonstop descriptions of food, clothes, music and more engage all the senses and immerse the reader into this delightful book by debut author Uzma Jalaluddin.  It is full of humor, wit, and fun as well as facing serious issues of prejudice, family expectations, and balancing different cultures and traditions. Jalaluddin is a natural storyteller, and Ayesha rarely reads like a debut novel.  Surprisingly, the times it becomes most forced or clunky tend to be in scenes most reminiscent of Pride & Prejudice. Quotes (or near quotes) from Austen are stilted and tended to take me out of the rhythm of the book.  Sometimes it felt like Ayesha was trying to force too many things into it. But as a whole, Ayesha At Last is a wonderful story of self discovery, a sweet romance, and an emotional triumph.  Fans of Sonali Dev's Austen retelling Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors, the crazy meddling families in Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians and Nalini Singh's Rebel Hard and charming romances in general will rejoice in Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha At Last.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review