Ayesha At Last

 by Uzma Jalaluddin

This is the second book I have read by this author.  I enjoyed it more than the first one.  It had more "meat".  The book is a bit of a homage to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

The story is about Muslim families living in the Toronto area.  The main character Ayesha is a modest devote Muslim who is struggling to get established as a teacher.  She has a cousin who is the popular one and a party animal, Hafsa.

Hafsa's goal in life is to get married.  Ayesha is in her late 20's but isn't too anxious to get married and her mother and grandparents, who live with her, are okay with her not wanting an arranged marriage.

The second story is about a very conservative, devote Muslim, Khalid.  Khalid has very set ideas about how a Muslim should behave and what a wife should be like.  He is getting grief from his new supervisor who has a hate on for Muslims based on her experience working in Saudi Arabia.  She doesn't like that Khalid won't shake hands and wears traditional Muslim attire and has a big bushy beard.  The supervisor is out to get him fired and finally decides to give him the job of setting up a website for an oversize women's lingerie business.  She figures this project will sink him.  She thinks this job will be for a tiny startup so it won't matter if the company loses the account.  She doesn't find out til later that the company makes multi-million dollars in sales per year.  Khalid is upset at this perceived demotion as he is an e-commerce consultant but he does what he is told.  The women from the lingerie company are supportive of Khalid because they see what his boss is doint to him.He is willing to have is Mother arrange a marriage for him.

The local Mosque is organizing an event for young Muslims.  Khalid, Ayesha and her cousin are recruited to help plan the event.  Hafsa wants to start an event planning business but also wants to meet a boy so she convinces Ayesha to say she is Hafsa.  Why Ayesha agrees to this I don't know.  Khalid and Ayesha spar alot because of their different views of Muslim acceptable behaviour but they are also attracted to each other.  Khalid's mother finds out about the attraction and hastily arranges an engagement between Khalid and Ayesha's cousin.  When Khalid hear's his future wife's name he is happy because he thinks it is Ayesha bu of course it is his cousin.

The mistaken identities is a plot taken from Shakespeare.  The angry mother who warns off a woman and the scene where Khalid tells Ayesha how much he loves her despite all her faults is straight out of Pride and Prejudice.

In the end Khalid says no to his mother and wants to marry Ayesha.  He is fired from his job, but a co-worker has evidence that will sink the boss.  He is okay with being fired because he has been hired by the women's lingerie company.

It was a light romance but I enjoyed how she developed the plot with references to Shakespeare and Jane Austen.