Synopsis

At a sumptuous family wedding, two former friends rediscover their own love story and the lies that tore them apart in a chaotic and swoony second-chance romance by the author of Yours for the Season.

Toronto attorney Dina Haq is looking forward to her influencer sister’s lavish South Asian wedding. She wouldn’t dream of overshadowing the event of the season by revealing her carefully guarded secret: Her own marriage has gone bust. She just needs to make sure her odious ex keeps his mouth shut, too. Complications arise once she discovers that the groom’s best man is none other than Luqman “Lucky” Latif, a law school crush who ghosted her six years ago.

Forced to abandon his lawyerly ambitions to help his struggling family in Chicago, Lucky rebuilt his life, and a successful contracting business, and has moved on from past hurts…or so he thinks. Then he sees Dina again, the woman who not only rejected him but also had the nerve to marry his best friend instead. He’s not sure his heart can survive another encounter.

As the wedding festivities unfold, Dina and Lucky rediscover their connection and begin to unravel the part her manipulative ex-husband played in their almost-love story. The past isn’t quite what they thought, but is it too late to imagine a new future together?

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Dina woke before her alarm. It was 7 am, and she knew she should get ready for work. Instead, she lay in bed and stared at her pink ceiling.

Her ceiling hadn’t always been pink. Eighteen months ago, when Arshad had moved out – or more accurately, after she had kicked him out – it had been a bland white. Six months ago, when their divorce was finalized, she had gone on a decorating blitz, painting the walls, trim, even the ceiling of the bedroom she had shared with her lying, cheating, ex-husband, a soft pink – a colour the salesperson at Benjamin Moore had assured Dina was ‘the neutral equivalent of an off-white.’

She wasn’t sure she still liked the pink, but she did enjoy wondering what would horrify her family more — the fact that she had kicked out her husband of nearly five years and secretly divorced him, or the fact that she had painted her house herself.

She hadn’t grown up in a family who took pride in DIY projects, or in any sort of manual labour. Why get one’s hands dirty when one could simply pay someone? was the Haq family motto. Dina remembered a parade of contractors named Jake, Luke, Marty, Brian, and Reggie, all affable and polite, who ‘did’ for her family. She could have called up any one of them. But then she would have had to admit why she was painting her bedroom a soft, not-so-neutral pink, a colour her hyper-masculine husband would have hated. Which meant she would have to explain that Arshad was no longer her husband, a conversation she was hoping to put off having with anyone outside of her best friend and fellow lawyer Lisa Wu, and definitely not her opinionated South Asian family, for as long as possible.

She knew the decision to conceal her marital problems and subsequent divorce from her family made little sense. If she hadn’t stopped seeing her therapist two years ago, she might have been able to parse through all the dysfunctional reasons why she had settled on secrecy as the best way to deal with a major life event. Though Lisa had assured her it had something to do with being the long-suffering eldest daughter in an immigrant family, combined with perfectionist tendencies and a healthy dose of log kya kahenge – Urdu for ‘what would people say?’ also known as her family’s official motto.

Arshad had agreed to remain quiet as well. He owed her, she reasoned. And since her odious ex still worked with her at Haq Law, she assumed he wasn’t eager to reveal the truth about the string of “mistakes” that had led Dina to show him the door. She tried not to dwell on how easily he had agreed to keep their ruse going, or what that might mean; she knew Arshad was not one to concede without expecting something in return.

Then there was the other complicating factor: around the time her divorce had been finalized, her baby sister Hania had announced her engagement to Samir Kazi, only child and heir apparent to a wealthy family in Chicago. They had met on one of the Muslim matchmaking apps and hit it off. Her parents had been overjoyed, and the two families had immediately hired a wedding planner and started planning a summer wedding to coincide with the neighbouring countries’ respective national holidays – Canada Day on July 1, and Independence Day on July 4.

So really, she was doing everyone a favour by keeping this life update to herself. Dina didn’t want to throw ice water on her parents’ and Hania’s happiness, or take any of the attention away from her sister. She would tell her family the truth about her altered marital status after her baby sister’s wedding. And then Arshad would resign his position as partner at Haq Law, and take a one-way trip to Mars. One could only hope.

Review

This is the first book I have read by this author, and it was very educational. I have not read books that centered around Muslim characters and community, so I enjoyed a sneak peek into some of the traditions surrounding a wedding, and their customs and culture. It is not overwhelming, and I do think there was room to expand and educate the reader about the Muslim faith and culture.

I have mixed feelings about Dina. She doesn’t seem to be able to make many decisions on her own, and I do not understand why she kept her divorce from Arshad a secret. I understand she might feel like she is letting her parents down, but at the same time, she is a grown woman and should be making her own decisions. After all, we learn that everything Arshad does is for his own gain, and not for love. Dina’s sister is a bit over the top with this wedding, but perhaps that is common in their culture. It reminded me of an Indian wedding, or the little bit that I know about those. Plus, everything she does is for the cameras and her following, but that doesn’t make it right.

There is a lot of miscommunication between Lucky and Dina in college, and had they actually spoken to one another about their feelings, this book wouldn’t have happened. However, you have to have some drama to create a story. They did learn to talk to each other, but not about everything. Dina was still keeping her divorce a secret from everyone, and Arshad was holding it over her head.

There are some interesting revelations near the end regarding the law firm Dina works for. I was glad to see she finally made a stand for what she wanted versus what her family wanted. That includes a relationship with Lucky.

I did enjoy reading this book, and we give it 4 paws up.

About the Author

Uzma Jalaluddin is the author of eight novels, including DINA GETS LUCKY (2026), MOONLIGHT MURDER (2026) and DETECTIVE AUNTY (2025), featuring Kausar Khan, a South Asian Miss Marple, YOURS FOR THE SEASON (2025), a multifaith holiday romcom, MUCH ADO ABOUT NADA (2023), a second-chance romance inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and THREE HOLIDAYS AND A WEDDING (2023), a holiday romcom co-written with Marissa Stapley. Her debut novel, AYESHA AT LAST (2019), was a Goodreads Choice Award Finalist, Cosmopolitan UK Book of the Year and Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2019. Her second novel, HANA KHAN CARRIES ON (2021) was an instant Canadian bestseller, and named a 2021 Best Romance Novel by The Washington Post. It is currently in development for film by Mindy Kaling. Uzma is a former contributor to The Toronto Star, and has written for The Atlantic. She lives outside Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two sons.

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