Arsalan Nizami is looking for love.
Seventeen-year-old Arsalan has a lot to consider: Apart from contemplating an arranged marriage, he’s integrating into a public high school after being home-schooled and is suddenly meeting peers who use 21st-century references in their conversations, a big change from his etymology-obsessed great-grandfather Nana’s passion for Old English. The Sacramento teen is also looking for a rishta aunty, hoping a matchmaker can secure his future before his 100-year-old Nana passes away. Having lost his mother in a car accident two years ago, and not being on good terms with his abusive, alcoholic, absentee father, Arsalan is alone with Nana as his only real family. Enter Beenish “Beans” Siraj, his free spirit of a classmate who is also Muslim and Pakistani American. Beans has a proposal for Arsalan. If he helps her out by being her dance partner, part of a special plan she has to disrupt her sister’s wedding, she will set him up with dates in exchange. Masood has crafted each of his characters with care, using them to explore topics such as grief, domestic violence, divorce, addiction, and religious differences. Despite the seriousness of these subjects, Arsalan’s hapless, earnest, and socially naïve narration adds humor and lightness to this story of finding your place in the world despite feeling like a misfit.
An evocative, charming tale of two types of families, the one you are born into and the one you choose.
(Fiction. 13-18)