Sameera Malik has three problems this winter.
One, she’s in danger of losing her job. Two, her relationship with her family is still strained. And, three, Tom Cooke, a chef who catered an event for her firm, keeps popping up in her life — at her office’s holiday party, on her social media feed and in her mother’s kitchen (although, she’s pretty sure that last one is the fault of her matchmaking mother). Tom’s presence in her life is a problem, mostly because she doesn’t have a problem with it. He’s magnetic and charming, and she doesn’t want to leave his orbit, even though the other two issues in her life should be taking priority right now.
In “Yours for the Season,” Uzma Jalaluddin’s latest holiday romance, Sameera finds herself taken up in a whirlwind fake dating scheme in the hopes of holding onto her job. After a short video of her and Tom goes viral, he makes her a proposition: He’ll introduce her to a rich prospective client if she’ll help him with his social media presence as a chef influencer by pretending to be his girlfriend.
While fake dating isn’t a novelty in the romance genre, it’s especially interesting in this book because of Sameera’s background. She comes from a Muslim family, but after struggles with her family and her faith, she herself doesn’t observe Islam, holding on more to the culture and traditions than to the religion itself. To her Muslim family, though, the concept of dating isn’t exactly the norm, and fake dating is an idea they’re pretty much foreign to. In other words, when her mother finds out that she’s “fake dating” Tom, she wrangles an invite for the whole family to visit Tom’s relatives in their small town for the holiday season. As such, we now have a fake dating scheme along with a healthy dose of forced proximity, courtesy of Sameera’s mother. It’s typical romance fare but fun to watch unfold, nonetheless.
The relationship between Sameera and Tom is central to the book, mostly because their blossoming relationship allows both of them to gain the perspective, strength and wherewithal to address deeper issues and wounds in their individual lives. Jalaluddin skillfully sets up the foundation for their friendship first, in an effort to pave the way for a healthier romantic relationship later on. They start as strangers, but through a natural progression — a perfectly picturesque montage made up of cooking and sledding, conversing and sharing — they become confidantes. Eventually, because of their meddling families and small-town whispers, they begin to serve as each other’s lifelines through the hijinks of the holiday season.
Even more meaningful than the romantic relationship, though, is the one between Sameera and her family. After a few years of estrangement following the messy reveal of long-hidden secrets, Sameera and her parents are on unstable ground. They tiptoe around their issues and are content to continue hiding their true feelings about the hurt they’ve caused one another. Similarly, we see Sameera struggle with her faith as a result of the built-up tension between her and her parents. Through Sameera’s character, Jalaluddin paints a heartbreakingly real picture of loss of identity, and the difficulties that lie in the process of reclaiming it.
Over the course of the book, however, we watch the family reach a much healthier place. Sameera realizes that she needs to be honest with her parents, and her parents realize that they need to be willing to meet their daughter halfway. Through some heavy conversations, wherein her parents reveal the difficulties in raising children against the backdrop of their own history, the Malik family becomes whole once more.
“Yours for the Season” has all the ingredients to make a picture-perfect Hallmark Christmas — love, snow and good cheer — but it also goes deeper. Balancing staying afloat amid career difficulties, the complexities of family and becoming familiar with the unfamiliar, the novel ultimately guides readers through the experience of losing your identity only to find a new version of yourself along the way — one that is just looking for a reason to come out of your shell. In “Yours for the Season,” Jalaluddin reminds us that life may be messy, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful.
Daily Arts Writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.
