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A review by ballgownsandbooks
Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin
I have a somewhat mixed track record with Uzma Jalaluddin, and I wasn’t originally planning to request this for review – but the publisher reached out to me, and once they’d offered, I wasn’t going to say no! But having proceeded to devour the book within 24 hours, and then sit on my feelings for over a fortnight, I’m still pretty conflicted about this book.
The retelling
The first thing to say is that it’s barely a Persuasion retelling. In typical Uzma Jalaluddin fashion, it’s an extremely loose reimagining – I can see where she’s taken inspiration from Austen, but if I wasn’t looking for the connections, I probably wouldn’t have realised it was a retelling at all. Beyond being a second chance romance, the plot beats aren’t the same at all, and Nada is certainly nothing like Anne Elliot!
The heroine
I do appreciate Jalaluddin’s ability to write complex heroines, but my main feeling about Nada was just that she was messy, which is a main character type that I personally tend not to do so well with. While I did relate to some of her feelings, particularly around trying to navigate her two cultures, I mostly found her pretty unlikeable and annoying. She makes some pretty huge mistakes, both in the past and present timelines, and she just felt very immature and self-absorbed!
The romance
I also wasn’t entirely sold on the romance. While I enjoyed some of Baz and Nada’s banter, especially in the flashbacks to their original relationship, there wasn’t really much depth to their relationship beyond that. In the original Persuasion, we’re led to believe that Anne and Wentworth could have been happy if they had got married when they first wanted to. But Baz and Nada were completely wrong for each other at 21 – without spoiling anything, I was truly floored by some of the stupid decisions they made, and I absolutely cannot believe that they would have had a successful relationship if they’d stayed together at that point! And they never really discuss their relationship deeply in the present timeline either, so even though they’re both (supposedly) wiser and more mature, that doesn’t feel like enough to fix all their issues.
(That said, the overall discussion around getting married young – particularly in the context of South Asian Muslims – hit me hard and made me feel a LOT of things, so I have to give credit to the writing, even if I didn’t love the characters!)
The representation
In terms of the wider story, I always appreciate the way Uzma Jalaluddin manages to capture such a wide spectrum of ways of being Muslim (right down to her willingness to embrace the more uncommon Muslim names – among others, this book had a Bazlur Rahman, Owais, Narjis, Waqas, Firdous...) There was also zero Islamophobia or racism in this book (although a lot of Nada’s struggles have to do with navigating her South Asian-Canadian identity, it’s internal conflict rather than bigotry), which made a nice change!
However, your mileage may vary on whether you consider it halal. I would echo the reviews that say you need to stick with it at the moment where it seems to be not halal in a major way, because that does get cleared up (again, trying to avoid spoilers!) – but still, the milder moments may also stretch the boundaries of what different people consider appropriate.
So overall… I didn’t love this? But I do think a lot of that was down to personal taste, and if you like books about messy, twenty-something women who are allowed to make mistakes, it’s definitely engaging and propulsive!
(Also, this is totally irrelevant to my feelings on the book itself, but I cannot get over how misleading this title is! Every time I think about this book I'm bemused all over again that it's not a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing!)
Thank you to Atlantic Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The retelling
The first thing to say is that it’s barely a Persuasion retelling. In typical Uzma Jalaluddin fashion, it’s an extremely loose reimagining – I can see where she’s taken inspiration from Austen, but if I wasn’t looking for the connections, I probably wouldn’t have realised it was a retelling at all. Beyond being a second chance romance, the plot beats aren’t the same at all, and Nada is certainly nothing like Anne Elliot!
The heroine
I do appreciate Jalaluddin’s ability to write complex heroines, but my main feeling about Nada was just that she was messy, which is a main character type that I personally tend not to do so well with. While I did relate to some of her feelings, particularly around trying to navigate her two cultures, I mostly found her pretty unlikeable and annoying. She makes some pretty huge mistakes, both in the past and present timelines, and she just felt very immature and self-absorbed!
The romance
I also wasn’t entirely sold on the romance. While I enjoyed some of Baz and Nada’s banter, especially in the flashbacks to their original relationship, there wasn’t really much depth to their relationship beyond that. In the original Persuasion, we’re led to believe that Anne and Wentworth could have been happy if they had got married when they first wanted to. But Baz and Nada were completely wrong for each other at 21 – without spoiling anything, I was truly floored by some of the stupid decisions they made, and I absolutely cannot believe that they would have had a successful relationship if they’d stayed together at that point! And they never really discuss their relationship deeply in the present timeline either, so even though they’re both (supposedly) wiser and more mature, that doesn’t feel like enough to fix all their issues.
(That said, the overall discussion around getting married young – particularly in the context of South Asian Muslims – hit me hard and made me feel a LOT of things, so I have to give credit to the writing, even if I didn’t love the characters!)
The representation
In terms of the wider story, I always appreciate the way Uzma Jalaluddin manages to capture such a wide spectrum of ways of being Muslim (right down to her willingness to embrace the more uncommon Muslim names – among others, this book had a Bazlur Rahman, Owais, Narjis, Waqas, Firdous...) There was also zero Islamophobia or racism in this book (although a lot of Nada’s struggles have to do with navigating her South Asian-Canadian identity, it’s internal conflict rather than bigotry), which made a nice change!
However, your mileage may vary on whether you consider it halal. I would echo the reviews that say you need to stick with it at the moment where it seems to be not halal in a major way, because that does get cleared up (again, trying to avoid spoilers!) – but still, the milder moments may also stretch the boundaries of what different people consider appropriate.
So overall… I didn’t love this? But I do think a lot of that was down to personal taste, and if you like books about messy, twenty-something women who are allowed to make mistakes, it’s definitely engaging and propulsive!
(Also, this is totally irrelevant to my feelings on the book itself, but I cannot get over how misleading this title is! Every time I think about this book I'm bemused all over again that it's not a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing!)
Thank you to Atlantic Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying
Minor: Mental illness and Ableism
Depression, divorce