A Tribute to "Real Zahra" now that LOVE, INC. is officially on the shelves!

LOVE, INC. officially arrived on bookshelves yesterday—at least in the U.S. Here in Canada, our home and native land, it might be another week. (It is dogsled season.)

As a reminder, here’s what the book’s about:

Zahra, Kali, and Syd would never have met if their parents' marriages hadn't fallen apart. But when the three girls collide in group counseling, they discover they have something else in common: they've each been triple-timed by the same nefarious charmer, Eric, aka Rico, aka Rick. Talk about eye-opening therapy.

Cheerful, diplomatic Zahra is devastated. Rico had been her rock and sole confidant. How could she have missed the signs? Free-spirited, flirtatious Kali feels almost as bad. She and Rick hadn't been together long, but they'd felt so promising. Hardened vintage-vixen Syd is beyond tears. She and Eric had real history... Or so she'd thought. Now all three girls have one mission: to show that cheater the folly of his ways.

Project Payback is such a success, the girls soon have clients lining up for their consulting services. Is your boyfriend acting shady? Are you dying to know if your crush is into you? If you need a little help to make-up, break-up or meet someone new, look no further than Love, Inc.


What isn’t mentioned here is that Zahra is also struggling with a culture clash at home. Her maternal grandparents have arrived from Pakistan with an agenda: they want to introduce Zahra to their culture. To her mind, it’s less an introduction than a hostile takeover; Zahra considers herself more like her Scottish-American dad.

Take a look at our author photos. As you can probably tell, Yvonne and I have little first-hand experience with the culture clash Zahra’s facing. And yet, we see it around us all the time, because Toronto is an extremely cosmopolitan city. We wanted to reflect some of that tension in this story.

Obviously, it’s tricky for an author to step into another culture and capture its nuances, especially in a comic way.

That is where “Real Zahra,” our cultural attaché, came in. As we noted in the book’s acknowledgements, Real Zahra not only let us borrow her name, she graciously answered all of our questions. This was probably challenging at times, as Real Zahra is an elegant and refined 20-something who has lived in Toronto for ages and gets along well with her family.

Yet when we asked her to put herself in the mind of “Fake Zahra,” a rebellious and belligerent 15-year-old, Real Zahra consistently rose to the challenge. She also took the time to describe many traditions and foods in detail that Wikipedia could never provide. If we proposed an event and Real Zahra declared, “That would never happen,” we took her seriously and made changes accordingly.

In other words, she helped to make the story authentic. At the end, she even read a draft to make sure we hadn’t made any truly egregious errors.

So, once again, our sincere thanks to Real Zahra. We couldn’t have done it without you!

And if anyone has a bone to pick with Fake Zahra, put the blame squarely on us.