A review by jkneebone
The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim

emotional lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The Love Match follows Zahra, a recent high school graduate who finds herself postponing college so she can work full-time and support her family, who have struggled since her father's death two years earlier. Zahra longs to study writing someday, but worries about sharing her dreams with her practical Bangladeshi mother. When her mother ambushes her with an arranged meeting with Harun, the son of a wealthy family, Zahra is incensed. But Harun is equally uninterested in their courtship, so he and Zahra concoct a plan to fake date and keep their parents off their back. This allows Zahra to pursue the guy she's actually interested in, a coworker named Nayim who's a poor aspiring musician (aka not a good marriage prospect).  Although at first everything seems to be working out great, Zahra soon becomes conflicted as she gets to know Harun better during their fake dates, and finds out how little she really knows about Nayim.

Although I overall enjoyed The Love Match, I think being an adult rather than a teenager, and also coming from a Western background, kept me from fully buying into the premise/embracing the plot. I understand that early engagements/marriages are not uncommon for Bangladeshi young people, but I struggled with how seriously all of the characters (Zahra, her love interests, and side couple Dani and Ximena) took their relationships given that they were all only eighteen years old.
Zahra and Harun exchanging "I love you's" after a month of knowing each other, some of that spent disliking each other, felt very fast. I also didn't buy that a) Dani and Ximena had been together since middle school, and b) neither would see an issue with Ximena trying to get Dani to come to Haiti with her instead of starting college. I was fully on Mr. Tahir's side there, it seemed irresponsible on both of their parts, especially given that, again, they are eighteen.
I fully acknowledge that there is probably some cultural context that I am missing, and I am coming to this from a Western viewpoint, but I think that the book might have worked better for me if the characters had just graduated from college, rather than high school. A lot of the plot points could have been the same or similar - Zahra could have had to go part-time, and not be graduating on time, or she could be delaying entry into a MFA program - but I would have bought the characters being ready to make such serious commitments more if they were twenty-two.

(My other gripe is a more personal one - how does Zahra find a college professor who is willing to read her amateur novel? My college creative writing professors were dismissive of anything we'd written in high school and wanted us to start with short stories at least until grad school, but I digress.)

Despite my struggles to suspend my disbelief re: the age of the characters, it was a fun read that I'm sure lots of YA romance fans would enjoy. Zahra's friends and family were great side characters, and I really liked how the author explored the interpersonal dynamics and Zahra's sense of obligation to her family. As an outsider, I enjoyed the representation of Bangladeshi culture, and as a crafter I loved that her mother had a tailoring/sewing business :) A very clean read as well, if that is something you are concerned about. 
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