Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy and to PRH Audio for the complimentary audiobook. These opinions are my own.

When I saw this a modern adaptation of Persuasion by Jane Austen, I was immediately sold on the concept. That's my favorite of Austen's books. However, the adaptation is quite loose. In many ways, it's only an adaptation in that it's similarly a second chance romance.

At 30, Nada is living with her parents, as are both her older and younger brother. She feels stuck in her job. She had developed an advice app for the Muslim community, but her business partner betrayed her. Now her best friend and mother conspire to make her attend a conference where she runs into her old flame, Baz.

I didn't love the flashbacks we got to the history between Nada and Baz. It started in childhood when she bullied him. That made it hard for me to like Nada and made me see all their later interactions through that lens. In contrast, I greatly appreciated Baz. He is a wonderful character, but I could not understand what he saw in Nada.

I found the story interesting, especially in learning about the Muslim community and the tech world. But I wasn't as in to the romance or the adaptation.

I had to read this when I noticed it was a Muslim adaptation of Austen's famous work and it doesn't disappoint. Nada is very relatable as a woman on the cusp of 30 wanting to do more with life but still stuck. But things change at a conference bringing some most wanted action in both her personal and professional life. At the very conference, she comes face to face with Baz from her past and the second chance trope sets in making her question if there is more future for that relationship. The main thing I enjoyed was the adaptation including the Muslim culture, though I am not a muslim, I have had more exposure to the culture during my childhood and it was still educating about their culture. The secondary characters also had a role and they did add more to the plot.

I am just over here, hugging this book, Much Ado About Nada. It is the heartwarming,
lovable story of Nada, a woman living in Toronto with her family but held back by her past, in a rut at work and with her love life and still reeling after a friend stole the concept for the app she designed. As something needs to give, she gets reunited with an old flame. It is a retelling of Persuasion as a second chance romance and the angst of a lost love. All retold with Muslim characters and so much culture and tradition woven perfectly throughout. I loved the supporting characters - all adding a perfect balance to the complex family dynamics and personal struggles to overcome regrets. I loved it.

Are you able to keep secrets? 🤫 Have you ever had a situation when you accidentally let the secret slip?

For me, I think it depends on the secret, and how much it could cause a situation if people find out. I am sure we all have had morally gray situations, but I don’t know if I could hold the secret that Nada and Baz keep to each other. What is the secret that they hold? Well, for that you will have to pick up and read it. The novel released yesterday!

Focusing on the lives of the Pakistani diaspora community settled in Canada, we meet Nada Syed - a young, talented, and stubborn Muslim woman who is navigating her life attempting to balance the call for maintaining her traditional culture, while also seeking her own identity and working as an engineer while developing an app that works with her community.

Based on Jane Austen’s Persuasian, Nada still lives at home with her brothers and parents in Toronto, while she ignores her parent’s plea to get married. Although she works as an engineer, she has created a start-up called Ask Apa, which does not have a successful launch after Haneef, her business partner double crosses her. At the same time, her best friend Haleema is getting married and is engaged to her arch rival, Baz’s old brother, Zayn.

What neither Haleema nor her family members know that Baz and Nada hold a secret - a past that neither are comfortable with to share at the Pakistani religious convention that organized by Zayn and Baz Haq’s family who run the convention yearly.

As one of the most anticipated reads of this year for me, I was so excited to have the opportunity to read @uzmajalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada. For fans of romance authors like Jasmine Guillory and Helen Hoang, Uzma’s charming love story between Nada and Baz will warm your hearts, and this is me - someone who is very picky about romance novels, to the point, where I rarely read it. But, I read this within two days and could feel for Nada at every moment.

Thank you @berkleypub, @uzmajalaluddin, and @letstalkbookspromo for the gifted copy!

#BerkleyBuddyReads #BerkleyWritesStrongWomen #BerkleyPub #PenguinRandomHouse #UzmaJalaluddin #MuchAdoAboutNada

Much Ado about Nada is a contemporary romance inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion. And I absolutely loved it!

The book is set in Toronto at a Muslim convention. The narrator is 28 year old Nada (3rd person POV).

The book is told in a past/present timeline, which I absolutely loved. I don't usually find the past to be as interesting. But in this case the past starts when Nada was 11 years old. And moves forward by a few years each time. And the glimpses of the past were very important to the story.

I loved seeing the Muslim culture so prominently featured. And I was fascinated and interested in absorbing all of the information.

A lot of the story focuses on Nada's best friend Haleema who is planning a wedding. And on an app that Nada had created when she was finishing college. Also we meet Baz and find out what he means to her.

This book surprised me in the best possible way. The relationships were complex. I really enjoyed seeing Nada's family. And what was expected for all Muslim adult children. I enjoyed the convention so much. And I especially enjoyed seeing what transpired between Baz and Nada throughout the years.

I found this book to be moving, emotional and educational. I really enjoyed the back and forth in time. I enjoyed her best friend's wedding preparations. And it was so great that the the heroine was not just good. She made mistakes. This book is about family, secrets, friendships and betrayals. This book was so good! I definitely recommend it highly!

I loved Hana Khan Carries on and was super excited when I saw the announcement for Much Ado About Nada!

I was immediately drawn in to Nadia’s story as she is thrown into the convention with her best friend by her side. As far as her friends and family are concerned, she’s stuck. Her app flopped, she’s not dating anyone and she still lives at home.

I was sucked into the chemistry and enemies to lovers vibe of Nada and Baz. They’ve run into each other over the course of several years but most of their interactions ended badly. I was completely surprised by the twist and how Nada and Baz’s relationship evolved from there. I really enjoy learning more about Muslim culture through Jalaluddin’s books. I alternated between the audiobook and the ebook and really enjoyed the narration! I need to finish my backlist reads from this author and I can’t wait to see what they write next!

I enjoyed reading Jalaluddin’s Ayesha At Last, but I could see her neophyte writer flaws throughout. Not quite in control of her material, extraneous scenes, ungainly tone shifts, wobbly characterization, uneven pacing. (Why Hana Khan Carries On languishes in the TBR.) While there were flaws to her latest, Much Ado About Nada, this was also a romance writer in control of her material, with a stronger, more confident sense of who her characters were and where she wanted them to go. Her Muslim setting was as loving to her faith as Ayesha, but bolder in her critique and, at the same time, more buoyant in celebration. In a nutshell, Nada is Jalaluddin’s best book yet; I loved Nada and Baz, the setting, ethos, and, thanks to improved pacing, didn’t want to put it down. I was invested in her narrative. And speaking of narrative, here are the details of this Persuasion-inspired, second-chance romance; the blurb:

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 her 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 held 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 at Nada, bringing new complications and a moment of reckoning. Can Nada truly say goodbye to once was or should she hold tight to her dreams and find their new beginnings?

One of Jalaluddin’s narrative strengths is the alternating sections of “present day” Nada and Baz and flashbacks to their meeting, growth, and young love. Their past is fraught and passionate, with the heart-break and sweetness of first, young love. It is to Jalaluddin’s credit that past and present are equally compelling to the reader. For example, Nada and Baz’s meet-cute was a not-cute; with this line “Nada was eleven years old when she became a bully”; her victim? Eleven-year-old Baz. I was surprised, shocked, and curious to find out what happened. And what a story it is, dear reader. The present takes place largely during the Muslim conference: the story’s breadth is in the past; the present? To keeping Baz and Nada sufficiently in each other’s orbit that proximity forces them to confront feelings and a still-vibrant connection. Flashbacks deepen every exchange and make the emotional stakes high indeed.

In the interim, we have banter (my fave!): “The prudent thing to do would be to get straight to the point. He was a busy man, and she needed a favor. She decided to tease him instead. ‘Do you come here often? she asked. ‘Nice weather we’re having. How are your parents? Please give them my salams.’ Baz sighed deeply. ‘You are a very tiny, deeply irritating human being.’ he said. Affronted, she put her hand on her heart. ‘You’re too tall, and you frown too much.’ ‘What do you want?’ Baz asked.” Baz’s straight-man to Nada’s poking-the-bear wise-cracks is their present. As the past is revealed in greater and greater heart-breaking detail (Jalaluddin doesn’t aim for angst, but Baz and Nada’s youthful inexperience and mistakes are heart-wrenching; maybe, for those of us of a certain age, because they hit too close and hard, but it’s thanks to Jalaluddin’s writing talents they do so), Baz and Nada’s present exchanges, bitter, funny, sad, grow in intensity until they have to reckon with long-buried feelings, long-festering secrets, and a love very much alive.

In telling the story of Nada and Baz, their families and friends, Jalaluddin also captures the conflicting immigrant reality, the tension between past and future, the generation from the “old country” and their children, trying to figure out how to stay true to their heritage and yet, be a part of Canadian reality: “South Asian culture was deeply patriarchal–or at least the version of desi culture they had been raised with in Canada. It was a culture frozen in time from the moment of their parents’ migration. Many of their parents had only been able to focus on preserving as much of their home culture as possible, in an effort to stave off their children’s full-scale assimilation into their adopted country. As a result, there hadn’t been a lot of space, time, or energy to question some of the more toxic ideas they had imported alongside other traditions.” Baz and Nada have to learn to live with double-identities, not divest one and embrace the other, but reconcile the two. I loved how Jalaluddin celebrates the beauty of Muslim faith and culture, how it infuses Baz’s music and strengthens and supports Nada. It’s complicated, yes, but Jalaluddin understands that the romance genre allows you to affirm how contradictions may be reconciled, how something new can be made from integrating the best tradition has to offer.

I had one peeve with Jalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada: Baz’s characterization. I respect Jalaluddin is writing a heroine-centric POV, but it was hard to understand how Baz grew and changed to be able to work things out with Nada. We are never privy to his thoughts, desires, or regrets. When they were young, he had a persistent wanderlust and found it easy to say he would leave Nada for months at a time to see the world. Nada, in turn, rightly couldn’t reconcile his wanderlust with being able to grow to responsible adulthood. Though her actions and words make her the “villain” in their relationship, I understood where she was coming from and not where Baz was heading. A minor forehead-crease in what is a terrific romance, however. Given Miss Austen’s ur-romance-inspiration for Nada, she would agree Jalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada offers “a mind lively and at ease,” Emma.

Uzma Jalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada is published by Berkley and releases today, June 13. I received an e-ARC, from Berkley, via Netgalley, for the purpose of writing this review. This doesn’t impede the free expression of my honest opinion.

I throughly enjoyed this romance read from Uzma Jalaluddin, it had so much to offer to readers. The author really nailed the Persuasion retelling, which made my heart so happy! The second chance storyline involving the main characters, Baz and Nada, was so well done. Their lives intersected during many points in the story, so having the chapters flip from past and present really helped to show how their relationship evolved. The main characters were so into one another and their tension/chemistry was jumping off the pages when they were together! Their journey was filled with love, compromise, longing, regret, and forgiveness, which I really loved.

The South Asian Muslim culture aspects were amazing. The setting at the D&D conference allowed for so much food, clothing, traditions, and art to be showcased and the aspects of the upcoming wedding were fun to see come together. The family ties and the traditional cultural expectations of South Asian Muslim children seemed realistic but with a modern twist in this one. I loved Nada’s interactions with her friends and family members, they really brought a lot to the story. Nada’s personal struggles with the loss of her app was heartbreaking and I was so happy to see her take control of her future in the end, she really pushed herself outside of her comfort zone!

Overall, there are so many aspects about this book to love and I can’t wait for others to read it now that it’s available! Thank you Berkley Publishing for the free arc copy of this novel!

I simply fell in love with Much Ado About Nada! I felt for Nada all throughout the book. I just love her and her fateful encounters with Baz as they grew up. I knew they were meant to be and as the layers were peeled slowly to reveal what really transpired between the star-crossed lovers, I became more and more engrossed with their love story! All I can say is, the more Uzma Jalaluddin writes, the better she becomes! I’m not a Muslim, nor claim to know much about it, but boy, did I learn a lot from this book!!! I love how the story weaved around their faith and culture without being too in-your-face. There’s perfect balance of educating the reader while also making sure not to stray out of the main plot. I can’t find a single thing that I didn’t like about this book. It’s definitely a must read IMHO and I’m giving it all the stars in the world! So happy I got to read the ARC last month, thanks to @berkleypub and the author. It’s out in the world tomorrow so please do grab a copy! It’s the perfect summer read that’s sure to keep your heart light and swoony!💕💖💕

Much Ado About Nada
Rating: 4⭐️
Genre: Contemporary fiction/ romance
Troupes: second chance romance, forced proximity

Thanks @berkleypub for the advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review. This publishes on 6/13!

This is a retelling of the classic novel, Persuasion. To be fair, I’ve never read the original before, but I have a hard time believing it could be better than this creative retelling! In the latest from this author, we follow Nada, an engineer with start up aspirations, who feels stuck still living at home with her family. Once Nada reconnects with Baz, the brother of her BFF’s fiancé, complicated feelings resurface. There is plenty of pining and hope, and it eventually all comes to a head in the best way. Their story was hard to put down.

Ayesha At Last from this author was a special book for me. While this one didn’t quite top it, Nada and Baz are a couple I won’t soon forget, in their quest for their own happily ever after. Can’t recommend this one enough and can’t wait to see what’s next from this great author.

Thank you Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for access to this arc.

Where the book worked best for me was in the depiction of the Syed family. This was closely followed by how the immigrant community they are a part of is shown. Some of this is very positive and some of it shines a light on the struggles of the first generation to settle into life in a foreign country and cling to life as they knew it even as their Canadian born children try to move ahead and balance their lives between what their parents want and what they want. But don’t think that the parents are barely making do – most of them are shown to have achieved success and are trying to do their best – as they see “best” – for their children.

Nada and Baz both admit to being “Brown Children” (term used in the book) – dutiful outside yet also resentful, at times, inside at their parent’s demands. But at the same time, they’ve been raised to expect their elders to have strong opinions about their careers and their potential spouses and to buck the system too strongly can lead to lowering the family status in the community. Nada’s older brother and his wife divorced, leading her brother to suffer years of depression while Nada’s younger brother has a neurological condition that has led him to eventually need a wheelchair and to develop an in-your-face attitude to those in their community who look down on him. Nada despises the fact that some of the Muslims who have endured racism and bullying are content to view and treat her brother this way.

Then there is the Muslim representation. For most, their religion is front and center and always a part of their lives. I can see that something like the Muslim Conference would be a freeing experience where they can just be accepted and be themselves. Nada’s disastrous past business experience was based on trying to do something good for her community. The whole conference grew out of Baz’s parent’s business. There is an event in Nada’s teen past where her hijab is pulled off in public and it’s treated with care and concern for her. It’s mentioned how often Nada prays each day and how much the Muslim student groups meant for her as a place to go as well as how meaningful it was to her to visit the Aga Khan Museum.

One thing I think was done well is how the main characters all made mistakes. None of them was perfect. Lessons had to be learned and trust regained. Nada and Baz were young and impetuous when they made their worst mistakes. They’ve had six years to regret and wonder and live with the pain of their actions. The other couple in the book worry that they might be marrying too quickly in the face of still being unmarried at thirty. Nada’s brother put his parent’s dictates above his bride’s and lost her as a result. Nada tried my patience at times but in the end, I think she, along with several others in the book, did reflect and learn. B/B-

Nada is almost 30 and her life is not at all what she dreamed it would be. She’s living with her parents, her tech start up was a big fail, and she is very single. In many ways she feels like a failure. Her best friend Haleema is determined to help Nada get out of her rut and invites her to join her at a giant annual Muslim conference to meet Haleema’s fiance and his brother. What she doesn’t realize is that Nada already has a history with Baz and Nada is forced to confront it all at the conference.

This is my first Uzma Jalauddin book and I quickly ordered her backlist after reading. I was amazed at how seamlessly the multiple characters, storylines, and even time periods were woven together in a cohesive way. With everything going on this book could have easily been confusing, but it wasn’t at all. The characters felt so real - they were flawed yet I felt for them even at their worst, they had so many layers as individuals and that impacted the various relationships, they were messy and chaotic in the most relatable way. I enjoyed this book so much!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for the advance copy.

This is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Nada is struggling both in her professional and personal life. Her best friend, Haleema, wants to fix that so she invites Nada to the annual Muslim conference where she meets Haleema’s fiancé and his brother, Baz. No one knows that Nada already knows Baz. She hasn’t seen him in years, but they have a complicated, secret past.

This was a fun book filled with Muslim culture and a second chance romance. Told from present and flashbacks from the past of Nada and Baz’s youth. It was a slow burn read with a little but of romance. It was more about Nada discovering what she wants out of life. There was a little twist that I wasn’t expecting that shed a new light on everything. It was an entertaining and easy read.

This is certainly a romance, but I felt the theme of growth was the main focus.

Nada and Baz have known each other forever. They dated and broke up in the past. But the timing was never qutie right.

I did love seeing the growth in Nada. We get the story in a dual timeline - present and varous times in the past. This I feel definitely helped keep me invested in the storyline.

I didn't particulary care for Baz. And Baz and Nada don't seem to honestly be in love, although they do care about each other, so I missed that spark in their relationship. I wasn't really rooting for a HEA.

I did like all of the cultural aspects of the story. And would definitely read this author again.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review and to Let's Talk Books Promo for allowing me to be a part of this Berkley Buddy Read!

I was hoping to love this one as much as "Ayesha at Last", but I had hard time settling into the story and characters. The story had some flashback chapters which is typically not my favorite feature. I stopped around 20%.

Read if you like:
🧣 Muslim Rep
🇨🇦 Books Based in Canada
😡 Enemies to Lovers
⏳ Past and Present Timelines
📚 Persuasion by Jane Austen

I really wish I loved this one more and as a Jane Austen retelling I really thought I would like it more but I just struggled with the characters and all the backstory.

It felt like too much backstory and not enough of the romance when I was expecting romance from this one to be more front and center with more pining.

I really struggled with Nada’s bully storyline as you want to root for your FMC in a romance but it’s hard to root for someone that bullied their love interest so much that he left the school they were at as children.

Overall, I loved the representation and seeing the Muslim and Indian culture from
another POV through the author but ultimately this one just didn’t suck me in and keep me interested as much as I had hoped.

Thank you Berkley for my ARC in exchange for my review.

Much Ado About Nada is a delightful second-chance romance that draws inspiration from Jane Austen's classic novel, Persuasion. This novel is a perfect blend of romance, humor, tenderness, and originality that will captivate readers from start to finish.

Please note: this was an ARC provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Genre: contemporary romance
Setting: Toronto
POV: single, 3rd person, past tense
Tropes: second chance romance, secret relationship, dual timeline, injured/comfort
Spice Level: 1/5🌶, closed door

What I Liked: I love Jane Austen, so this romance inspired by her novel Persuasion was really interesting to me (although the title really made me think Shakespeare)! I thought the FMC was very funny and I adored seeing her growth throughout the dual timeline. The Muslim family dynamics were fun, and I thought the disability rep was good, too. This novel focuses on having faith in yourself and following your dreams. There’s a few amazing swoon-worthy moments and jaw-dropping reveals, which I loved!

What I Disliked: I wish we had gotten to see more of the MMC’s journey; the growth felt very one-sided here. The romance also felt secondary to the FMC’s journey, but I overall enjoyed it!

Read This Book If…you love characters yearning for each other for yearsss.

Memorable Quote: “Doesn’t it just come down to faith? When you make a decision and stick to it, you’re showing that you have faith in yourself, in your path, or in someone else. Right?”

Apparently, this is the season of second-chance romances for me LOL. The last three or four contemporaries I've read have featured this as the main trope and I'm loving it??? This one, in particular, caught my eye because of how it's marketed as a Persuasion re-telling and I am ALWAYS a sucker for that. I loved all of the cultural aspects and learned a lot about Muslim relationships and weddings and was Googling all of the food and clothing-related terms because I needed to know all about all of it.
♥️
I loved Nada and Baz and slowly learning about how they knew each other in the past while seeing them clash in the present had me flying through the book. There was a reveal about their past that honestly blew my mind and because of that and because their official reconnection didn't happen until the very end I'm giving this 4 stars. Still so good and the writing was amazing and has me already eyeing up Jalaluddin's other books but I just wanted a little more between the two actually together.
♥️
Huge thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for allowing me to read an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

I received a complimentary advanced copy of MUCH ADO ABOUT NADA by Uzma Jalaluddin. Thank you to Berkley Publishing and PRH Audio for the chance to provide an honest review.

Publication Date: 6/13/2023
Rating: 3 / 5
MUCH ADO ABOUT NADA follows the title character Nada. She is nearly thirty years old, but still single and living at home with her family. Her mother is putting on the pressure for Nada to find her match and get married, but Nada is resisting. Pressure from her mother and from her best friend to come and meet her new fiancée convinces Nada to attend the annual Muslim conference. What no one realizes is that Nada’s friends future brother in law is Baz, someone with whom Nada has a complicated past.

This book took me a while to settle into. We start off hearing about Nada’s childhood. She was bullied in school, but she also was a bully herself and this made it hard for me to initially connect with Nada. I felt like that didn’t entirely get addressed and while Nada wasn’t a bully throughout her life, I did want a little more resolution to that.

I thought that the reveals in the relationship between Nada and Baz were well paced with little updates coming as the timeline moved back and forth between present and past. Second chance romance isn’t a favorite for me typically, but I think that it went pretty well here. I did question a bit the reason why they weren’t together, but age and maturity definitely played a role in that.

I did really find Nada’s career goals to be an interesting element. Nada has a good job as an engineer, but her real dream is tied up in the app she developed called Ask Apa. The plot threads around why this venture didn’t go as hoped made for some interesting reveals and I was pulling for Nada to get things fixed.

This is a retelling of Jane Austen’s PERSUASION and while those elements were there if I went looking for them, it isn’t a book where I would have drawn the comparison if I hadn’t known that going in.