The Marriage Clock

Named one of Pop Sugar's Best Books to Put in your Beachbag this summer and one of the best books of July.

A Booktrib "Romance to get you in the swing for Wedding Season" of 2019

A Book Riot "Five New Diverse Romantic Comedies"

Bustle's "21 new summer novels to spice up your summer reading"

To Leila Abid’s traditional Indian parents, finding a husband is as easy as match, meet, marry. Yes, she wants to marry, but after 26 years of singledom, even Leila is starting to get nervous. And to make matters worse, her parents are panicking, the neighbors are talking, and she’s wondering, are her expectations just too high?

But for Leila, a marriage of arrangement clashes with her lifelong dreams of a Bollywood romance, where real love happens before marriage, not the other way around. So she decides it’s time to stop dreaming and start dating.

It’s an impossible mission of satisfying her parents’ expectations, while also fulfilling her own western ideals of love. But after a series of speed dates, blind dates, online dates and even ambush dates, the sparks just don’t fly! Now, with the marriage clock ticking, and her 3-month deadline looming in the horizon, Leila must face the consequences of what might happen if she doesn’t find “the one…”

Zara Raheem received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She is the recipient of the James I. Murashige Jr. Memorial award in fiction and was selected as one of 2019’s Harriet Williams Emerging Writers. She resides in Southern California where she teaches English and creative writing. The Marriage Clock is her first novel.

“An intimate and entertaining glimpse into the life of a young Muslim American woman whose family wants her married. Now! You’ll want to read this in one sitting.” — Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times bestselling author

“Please cancel your weekend plans, because once you dive into The Marriage Clock, it’ll be impossible to tear yourself away. This romantic and insightful book introduces us to Leila Abid, who’s torn between her traditional parents trying to arrange her marriage and her own desire for agency.” — Cosmopolitan

“The Marriage Clock is a warm, funny debut novel about love, how we find it, and how we can keep it.” — Popsugar

“Zara Raheem’s The Marriage Clock, however, takes a unique and charming look at the beliefs we hold in regard to love and marriage. And that’s precisely why readers should be adding this novel to their August TBR piles.” — Culturess

“Raheem’s debut uses chick-lit tropes to smartly skewer modern ways of dating and to bring humor to more traditional South Asian ones.” — Booklist

“So fresh and charming and fun! I adored being in Leila’s world, from her girls’ nights with her friends to her conversations with her loving, pressuring parents to her many first dates. What a joy to read.” — Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth

“Zara Raheem’s The Marriage Clock is a unique, beautiful story about a woman coming to accept herself – and the notion that maybe marriage isn’t everything.” — All About Romance

“Raheem dedicates the book to every woman who has ever been told she wasn’t enough. In the face of ubiquitous cultural traditions that measure a woman’s worth by her marriageability, Leila’s journey shows us that the true measure of a woman’s worth is that she values herself.” — BookTrib

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