A sparkling second-chance romance inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion

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?