From the publisher:
Amira Khan has no plans to break her no-dating rule.
Thirty-year-old engineer Amira Khan has set one rule for herself: no dating until her grad-school thesis is done. Nothing can distract her from completing a paper that is so good her boss will give her the promotion she deserves when she returns to work in the city. Amira leaves campus early, planning to work in the quiet basement apartment of her family’s house. But she arrives home to find that her grandmother has rented the basement to . . . a barbershop quartet. Seriously? The living situation is awkward: Amira needs silence; the quartet needs to rehearse for a competition; and Duncan, the small-town baritone with the flannel shirts, is driving her up the wall.
As Amira and Duncan clash, she is surprised to feel a simmering attraction for him. How can she be interested in someone who doesn’t get her, or her family’s culture? This is not a complication she needs when her future is at stake. But when intolerance rears its ugly head and people who are close to Amira get hurt, she learns that there is more to Duncan than meets the eye. Now she must decide what she is willing to fight for. In the end, it may be that this small-town singer is the only person who sees her at all.
I’ve read a few of Heron’s books and enjoyed them, so when this one popped up as a recommendation, and I saw it was her debut novel, I decided to give it a read. There’s a theme of dealing with racism that just seemed appropriate at this time in our country, I’m sorry to say. But not to worry, there is plenty of humor, some heat, and an opposites attract, forced proximity romance at the heart of this story.
Amira runs into a little problem on the way home. A man on the train is making her feel uncomfortable, and another man who looks like a lumberjack comes to her rescue. But Amira is not the type who wants to be rescued. She needs to finish her master’s thesis in hopes of a promotion at work, so she decides to come home and make use of the solitude of her grandmother’s basement apartment. But when she gets there, she finds out the other bedrooms have been rented to a barbershop quartet, and all she knows about that is they need to sing. All the time. Not exactly conducive to studying.
One of the quartet turns out to be her lumberjack rescuer – Duncan Galahad (that name is a bit on the nose for me.) Amira can’t fault her grandmother; after all, she is staying there rent-free. She gets the quartet to agree to a schedule, and they fall into an easy friendship, despite their different backgrounds and cultures. Two of the men are a couple, the third is engaged, but Duncan is single. As he and Amira get to know one another, a physical attraction becomes apparent, leading to some suggestive sex. Amira likes to take charge in the bedroom, and Duncan finds that really hot, but it all takes place behind closed doors so we are not privy to that.
I enjoyed this – I like reading about different cultures, and these characters were all interesting. This was a terrific debut and as good a read as I expected from this author. Highly recommend.
11/2024 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE CHAI FACTOR by Farah Heron. HarperCollins Publishers (June 11, 2019). ISBN: 978-1464220128. 464p.
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