About the book…
Parents know best, but sometimes daughters know better…
Mills Ali has her dream job writing for an Asian magazine and a social life busier than the London rush hour. Everything's pretty good except for the husband sized shadow looming on the horizon. With a year’s countdown to her arranged marriage, Mills is on a mission. A firm believer in true love, she's determined to choose her own husband. Just how hard can it be to find the perfect suitor? Surely London’s Muslim dating scene is teeming with eligible young men? She's bound to find her soul mate. Isn't she?
With a fast encroaching deadline Mills can't waste time. As she embarks on the search to find him, she's convinced her soul mate can't be too far away. But is he closer than she thinks? Or do her parents know best after all?
About the author…
Ruth Saberton always knew she wanted to be a writer. From an early age she was busy filling note books with stories and rather than hero worshipping Wham and Duran Duran (which ages her!) Ruth's heroes were Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins. Several attempts at bodice rippers later, Ruth turned her attention to romance and now focuses on writing romantic comedies. Her debut novel, 'Katy Carter Wants a Hero' was championed by Richard and Judy and nominated for the RNA's Romantic Comedy of the Year Award as well as being described by Heat Magazine as, 'the heir apparent to Bridget Jones'. Ruth writes under her own name, but also has several pen names which include Jessica Fox, Georgie Carter, Holly Cavendish and Lucy Hepburn. Her boyfriend says he has many women all rolled into one!
Ruth is published by Orion, Pan Macmillan, Harper Collins and Notting Hill Press. Although she loves the UK, Ruth now lives in the Caribbean where she continues to write romances, teen novels and planning that bodice ripper!
My thoughts…
Wow! Where to start. Ruth offered me an e-copy of this book in return for an honest review. It gives me great pleasure to say it was brilliant.
Many people dismiss chick-lit as having no substance but often, as was the case with this book, you learn so much. I have been fortunate enough to have attended an Asian wedding and have experienced first hand the generousity and vibrancy that Ruth managed to portray so well in her book. For me Mills Ali the main character is brilliant. I felt every emotion that she felt - I laughed out loud and cried with her all the way through the book. By the end I felt she could have been someone I knew personally.
Mills is a typical young adult who feels stifled by her family, who actually understand her better than she realises. With the help of her mother she persuades her father to let her pursue her ambition to become a journalist and sets off to work on a magazine in London for twelve months - what she doesn't tell them is that she's also going to spend the year finding her own future husband to avoid the marriage her parents have arranged for her to a groom she's never met!
At the heart of the novel is the strong message of personal, cultural and family values which were different for Mills and her western friends but amounted to the same thing - respect! Ruth managed to weave the exotic Pakistani culture into this book in such a way I could see and taste the exotic Eastern clothes and food. She managed this in a typical, laugh out loud chick-lit style whilst respectfully conveying the difficulties and emotional struggles faced by young Muslim women living in a modern, western, society.
It's a very modern book which I highly recommend to any chick lit lover. Ruth Saberton is an author to sit up and take notice of - thank you.
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