You’re soon going to be thirty. And who’s going to marry you after thirty? Have you thought about that?
“We are going to be old and without grandchildren! Our noses will be cut!”
Said Leila’s mother to Leila.
Leila Abid is a 26 year Muslim American woman who had lifelong dreams of her Mr.Perfect filled with Bollywood inspiration. She wanted her spouse to have charming demeanor as King Khan, muscular build as Salman Khan and sensitive side as Akshay Khanna. Although there’s no such thing as perfection but she can compromise if someone even come close to her wishlist.
She has a worried mother who thinks that her Mr.Charming doesn’t exist and if she continues waiting like this, she would end up single for all her life. And then what will society think about her?
With these thoughts in mind, her mother activated all her connections with aunties in her list and matchmakers to find suitable doctors or engineers who will be the best fit for her. But her efforts ended up in disappointing her daughter who then begged to take this responsibility on herself because this is her life and she should have the right to find her Mr.Perfect.
Now she only has three months to find her match or else she had to marry where her mother says.
Left with no choices to fulfil her Western ideas of love, she starts searching for his husband to be. From online dating apps for Muslims to speed dating, blind dating and even ambush dating, no men come up in sparking the violins around and making her heart beats faster.
She also has a best friend Tanya who is a divorced lady. Tanya is blamed for ending her arranged marriage which happened in her teens. Leila also pushed Tanya in the speed dating event and fortunately, Tanya finds her Mr.Right. But later, her dreams shattered when her partner’s mother rejected for being a divorced woman despite being sensible, beautiful, intelligent and educated.
Aww! Men are still dominating the society today because of the reason that they are men and they can do anything while a woman has to suffer because they are divorced, widow, black and poor. How evil?
Zara Raheem’s writing in the Marriage Clock is so engaging that I ended this book in a couple of days. She depicts the right Indian heritage, the rishta hunting process and what happens under the umbrella of “Arranged Marriages.” You will find many laugh-out-loud moments in this book. I laughed when her Muslim father fixed her daughter’s meeting with the strange guy in her bedroom. Gosh! Anything to make the marriage possible!
You’ll also get to know how society starts getting worried once you crossed 25 and all they want to hear from you is Shadi shenanigans. Apart from all the positive traits in Laila Abid’s character, she has also one flaw that she’s too quick to form her opinions.
How can one decide after a meeting that this guy isn’t the one for me? Leila, you should take care of this.
In the quest of finding the perfect partner, she also comes across the cultural stereotypes and heartbreaks after getting familiar with a guy and later that guy shows no interest for the second date. Now when the deadline is near to end, she starts getting the blues about settling with the wrong man. Now, what will she do?
Rated 4.3 on Amazon Books, this book is probably the best read of this season. After all, it’s you who should decide the future of your life, not society. Think well!
About the Author
The Marriage Clock is penned by Zara Raheem which is also her first novel. She received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She is the recipient of the James I. Murashige Jr. Memorial award in fiction and was selected as one of 2019’s Harriet Williams Emerging Writers.
