Maya's Laws of Love

Starred review from December 1, 2023

DEBUT Maya is en route to Pakistan for her arranged wedding to Imtiaz, her fianc� of two years, when a severe storm forces her flight to make an emergency landing in Switzerland, stranding her for days. She decides to make the most of her detour by exploring the Swiss sights with Sarfaraz, her seatmate on the flight. They encounter more bad luck when they finally arrive in Pakistan, as a bus breaks down and forces them to travel together again. The harrowing situations they go through together create a strong bond between them, making it increasingly difficult to part ways. Once Maya finally arrives at her family's home, on the eve of her wedding, she must decide whether to play it safe and marry her longtime fianc�, who's always been respectful and caring and whom she hopes to fall in love with after marriage, or to take a chance at real and passionate love with Sarfaraz. VERDICT Rooted in Pakistani and Muslim culture and faith, this romance is a fun romp that features plenty of adventure and plot twists. Recommend to fans of Uzma Jalaluddin.--Migdalia Jimenez

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2024
Khawaja’s smart and nuanced debut finds Maya Mirza, 28, convinced she’s been romantically cursed—something she hopes to correct when she boards a bargain airline flight heading for Pakistan and her arranged marriage to a medical student named Imtiaz. Her seatmate is prickly family lawyer Sarfaraz Porter, who has a decidedly negative view of romance. After a storm necessitates an unexpected layover in Switzerland, Maya and Sarfaraz forge an unlikely friendship. Things between them heat up when they finally arrive in Pakistan and are subsequently robbed on an aborted bus ride from Islamabad to Karachi, necessitating a sojourn in a small village where they’re forced to pretend to be married. Soon after, with the memory of their time together fresh in her mind, Maya at last meets Imtiaz and his family—and gets quite a shock. The author notes in her foreword that her goal is “to show Pakistani Muslim women that they’re worthy of whirlwind, heart-fluttering romances”—and she succeeds in spades. Skillful plotting, appealing characters, and snappy prose mark Khawaja as a writer to watch. Agent: Uwe Stender, Triada US.

February 1, 2024
A woman questions what she really wants when the trip to her wedding takes a detour. Maya Mirza, a 28-year-old Pakistani Canadian teacher, has had such a history of bad luck that she thinks she must be cursed, and she's come up with a series of laws to try to cope with it, beginning with "Maya's Law #1: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." She's always had particularly bad luck in love, but things may be changing now that she's headed to Pakistan for an arranged marriage with a handsome doctor named Imtiaz, whom she's known for only a few months. Unfortunately, though, Maya's curse seems to be following her: When she gets on the plane, she finds herself seated next to the jerk who bumped into her in the airport, making her drop her travel documents, and kept walking without even a hint of apology. When the flight ends up grounded in Switzerland due to a storm, with no help from the airline and only a week to go until her wedding, Maya decides to team up with the only person she knows--the jerk, whose name is Sarfaraz--to try to make it to Pakistan on time. As they travel, though, Maya begins to wonder if the wedding she's headed to is what she really wants. The story of Maya and Sarfaraz is a refreshing spin on the endearing sunshine-and-grump trope. Maya means well but always ends up in scrapes; Sarfaraz is reluctant but finds himself opening up to Maya. The fear at the roots of both their personalities makes them seem real, and their Pakistani Muslim milieu is evoked in great depth. The reader is pulled along through each stop on Maya and Sarfaraz's long and ridiculous journey, rooting for not only the happy ending that is clearly coming but also the catharsis that will come with it. Khawaja has written a gem of a first novel. A heartwarming romp of love and self-discovery.

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February 15, 2024
Maya knows for a fact that she's cursed, especially when it comes to love. So, it's no surprise that she's agreed to an arranged marriage. When it's time to travel home to Pakistan for her wedding, a storm forces her plane to make an emergency landing in Switzerland. There, she finds an unexpected ally in the awful Sarfaraz, the rude man who sat next to her on the plane. After a bout of food poisoning and a tentative truce, Maya and Sarfaraz agree to attempt to travel to Pakistan together. But as they survive misfortune after misfortune on the way to Maya's wedding, Maya can't help but notice that over the last week, she's felt closer to Sarfaraz than she ever has with her own fianc�. Fans of road trip romances will love the chemistry between Maya and Sarfaraz as they evolve from enemies into friends, and finally into something more in Khawaja's sometimes silly and always sweet romance.

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