Zara Raheem received her MFA in Fiction from California State University, Long Beach and has been teaching English and Creative Writing for the past eight years. She resides in Southern California and the Marriage Clock is her first novel.
To Leila abid?s traditional Indian parents, finding a husband in their South asian-muslim American community is as easy as match, meet, marry. But for Leila, a marriage of arrangement clashes with her lifelong dreams of a Hollywood romance which has her convinced that real love happens before marriage, not the other way around. Finding the right husband was always part of her life-plan, but after 26 years of singledom, even Leila is starting to get nervous. And to make matters worse, her parents are panicking, the neighbours are talking and she?s wondering, are her expectations just too high? So Leila decides it?s time to stop dreaming and start dating. She makes a deal with her parents: They'll give her three months, until their 30th wedding anniversary, to find a husband on her own terms. But if she fails, they?ll take over and arrange her marriage for her. With the stakes set, Leila succumbs to the 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! And 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?.
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