by Jannat Noor (@jannatnoor.bsky.social)
Adult Contemporary Romance
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Query
PRIDE AND PERSUASION is an adult contemporary romance complete at 85,000 words. Set against the diverse and exhilarating backdrop of NYC, this book features a Pakistani American woman who will fight anyone to save her restaurant, even a beguiling property developer. A stand-alone with series potential, it combines the brash confidence and emotional vulnerability from Talia Hibbert’s Take a Hint, Dani Brown with the familial pressure and cultural tensions in Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin.
Fiercely pragmatic Safiya Farooqi has upscaled her family Pakistani takeout spot into a full-fledged restaurant. Focused, guarded, and tired of being underestimated, she’s not about to let anything—or anyone—derail her hard-earned success, especially not a matchmaking scheme cooked up by her conniving landlord. But when she collides with Fawad—infuriatingly charming and far too perceptive—at a food bazaar, selling her future suddenly feels a lot less pragmatic.
Tech entrepreneur Fawad Khan is determined to restore his late father’s property development firm to its former glory, while juggling traditional expectations with his own restless ambition. Pressured by his mother to finally settle down, he agrees to one last arranged date, mostly to get her off his back. He doesn’t expect Safiya—blunt, maddeningly magnetic, and utterly immune to his charm—to upend his carefully laid plans.
Their chemistry simmers beneath sharp-witted banter and mulish pride. Safiya is drawn to the vulnerability behind Fawad’s easy charm, while his quiet confidence and ability to see through her defenses make him hard to resist. Her fierce tenacity cuts through his grief, challenging everything Fawad thought he wanted—and tempting him to want deeper than duty. But when Fawad is matched with Safiya’s sister, Safiya gets engaged, and the brokerage sale that could save Fawad’s firm is the same one threatening to shutter her restaurant, their connection begins to fracture. With Safiya’s fear of vulnerability and Fawad’s need to please everyone but himself laid bare, they must choose between loyalty to their families—or risking everything, including their reputations and hard-won independence, for each other.
This manuscript was selected as a winner of the 2025 #RevPit competition and has undergone a full developmental edit. Set in one of the largest Pakistani American diasporas in New York, my debut explores platonic bonds and tender, hopeful romance with the heart and grit found in underrepresented communities.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
Safiya Farooqi turned up the heat on the freestanding stove in her family’s Pakistani bazaar stall, her temper rising with the flames as a greedy customer shamelessly flirted with her little sister.
She shooed him away. “We’ll refresh the samples in a minute. Come back then,” Safiya snarked.
No, she couldn’t reserve a plate for him. No, she wouldn’t be his personal chef. And hell no, she wouldn’t give him her sister’s Snapchat.
“He was persistent,” Haniya said, cutting up the cilantro for the garnish.
“Be firmer with your ‘no,’” Safiya replied. She added the par-cooked lamb chops to the wok, coating the mutton with the browned cumin seeds. The thick, evocative smell of the spice roasting in a large tadka pan tickled her nose, and her stomach rumbled like a distant crack of thunder.
“What did you think I was doing, Safi?”
Safiya shot Haniya a knowing look. “You were managing him, gudiya. Kept him hooked but didn’t reel him in.”
Her sister’s curly midnight-black hair was caught up in a messy bun, soft tendrils framing her flawlessly vivid face. Beneath the arch of her mischievous, dark brows, long wispy lashes swept over eyes that were a luminous hazel. A beautiful baby, their mother had coined Haniya a doll—gudiya.
“I wanted to see him flop around a little more,” Haniya said, eyes twinkling.
“If you don’t want ‘em, throw ‘em back in the water.” The breeze lifted tiny hairs at the back of Safiya’s neck, stirring a restless ache beneath her skin. Quietly, she asked, “Is that why you said yes to being in the marriage market? Your vanity couldn’t resist witnessing them flop over you?”
“Better vanity than arrogance,” Haniya fired back. Her sister didn’t take well to authority or judgement, but of course, if you asked Haniya, growing up under a controlling mother and sister tested the patience of even a saint. “People can want different things from you and be content. Even happy.”
“As long as you’re not following Mamma’s definition,” Safiya replied, giving the lamb chops one last toss before turning the heat off. “I need to restock the business cards before we close. Can you plate these and line it up?” she added, skewering the lamb chops with practiced ease.
A sharp car alarm wailed outside. Safiya flinched. It was ridiculous, the way certain sounds still got to her. For a split second, she was back in that sloped driveway—raised voices, a hand in her hair, and the sharp sting of humiliation.
Safiya’s grip on the skewer tightened. Then she forced herself to let it go. “And save me a plate?” she said, her voice deliberately lighter.
Haniya flipped the overhang sign to open. “Why didn’t you eat earlier? You get bitchy on an empty stomach.”
“You love me like that,” Safiya muttered, grabbing her overstuffed wallet.
“Only because jail time would really mess with my lifestyle.”
Safiya turned away before Haniya could see her grin.
The thick Astoria air was fragrant with spice and smoke. In the cramped mosque parking lot, vendors from across the diaspora were serving everything from tender beef and cubed rice to stuffed patties and rice pudding.
The four-weekend pop-up aimed to garner buzz and word-of-mouth for local restaurants in Queens. It was the perfect opportunity to trial their upgraded Pakistani menu now that renovations were complete at the Farooqi family restaurant.
Safiya stepped into the buzz of it all, letting it smooth out the ragged edges inside her. Near the kulfi stall, a boy, maybe seven, darted away from the line and tripped over a tent stake. His mango kulfi splattered on the cool pavement.
His face crumpled.
She grabbed a fistful of napkins from the stall and crouched to wipe the boy’s sticky hands. “One more,” she said, handing over a few crumpled bills to the vendor. “Mango.”
“Should’ve let him learn his lesson.” The bemused vendor handed her a fresh ice cream.
Safiya offered a tight smile. “He’s got plenty more opportunities to get hardened by the world.”
The boy didn’t say anything—he just took the kulfi, wide-eyed. Safiya winked, then straightened and continued toward the street.
That was when she saw it. A car, parked crooked, blocking her beat-up Honda van.
Scowling, Safiya fished in the back of the van for her business cards. The seats and the floor were crowded with napkins, aluminum trays, and whatnot.
She zeroed her gaze back to the offending car. The Mercedes was ostentatious, painted a bold candy red. The early evening sun bounced off the chrome trims. The low-slung sedan lounged across the end of the driveway, exuding the kind of arrogance that suggested it didn’t concern itself with trivial matters like accommodating other cars.
Something about it nagged at her. She stepped around a soot-grimed mound of snow and narrowed her eyes at the bumper.
Watch out for the idiot behind me.
Safiya had noticed that same obnoxious bumper sticker the last time she’d delivered food to the mosque a few weeks ago, boxed in by this very car. She’d fumed, waiting for someone—anyone—to help her find the owner, but none of the volunteers had bothered. Thankfully, the car behind her had pulled out that time, letting her escape.
Her ire burned as she wove her way through the crowd back to their stall. She itched with righteous indignation, wanting to remove the bumper sticker and slap it on the driver’s forehead. Who ruined a car with an offensive sticker? Idiot.
“Safiya!”
Sidetracked, she spotted her mother zipping through the crowd over by the recycling area. A yellow paisley-printed shalwar kameez adorned her mother’s petite frame while a thick maroon pashmina shawl trailed behind her over the gravel parking lot.
“I’ll go back to the shop and check in on Bilal,” her mother said, throwing their trash into the dumpster.
Safiya lifted the underside of the shawl and wound it over her mother’s slim shoulders. “He’ll be ready in time for the reopening.”
“Only if he passes the biryani test, beta,” her mother reminded her. Switching from a takeout-centered spot into fine dining had been a constant battle between a business-minded Safiya and her once-chef mother.
The restaurant previously had an unassuming name—Pakistani Food Palace. When Safiya changed it to Seema’s Karachi, wanting her mother’s stamp, her mother had resisted the idea. If it wasn’t broken, why fix it?
Safiya gave a small shake of her head and edged closer to their stall. Curiosity had weaved its way into her heart, and she wanted to unravel the string. She spun toward her mother. “It’s not like you to give in to Haniya’s every whim. Arranged marriage? Really? She’s only twenty-two.”
Her mother shut the dumpster lid with a soft snick. “She’s flighty and curious. Believe me, these things can take years,” her mother said in a low voice that Safiya strained to hear over the honking cars. “Also, I don’t want to feel as if I failed both of you.”
“You know I’m busy trying to upscale the restaurant,” Safiya bit out, as old wounds reopened. That her mother considered her a failure simply due to the lack of a love life hurt like a paper cut; shallow but significant.
“It’s always one excuse or the other,” her mother retorted, swiping Safiya’s wallet from her hand. “Life will not wait for you to be finished with your never-ending list.”
What Safiya would never admit aloud was that she hadn’t chosen to remain single. A mocktail of time, opportunity, and heartbreak had played different roles in forcing that choice upon her.
“My list is making sure we never worry about anything again. I want a chain of our restaurants, but for that to happen, this one needs to be successful. I keep telling you this.”
“The shop survived even as a ‘hole-in-the-wall,’ Safiya,” her mother said in a tired tone of repetition.
“I want more.”
When expansive ideas had started taking shape in her mind, Safiya looked beyond a corner store in a dense neighborhood. She wanted an authentic Pakistani restaurant, a food truck, a dessert station, and more. She wanted to be a restaurateur a la Fatima Ali and David Chang. And in a few months’ time, she, along with everyone else, would find out if her gamble had been worth it. So her mother’s support and appreciation would be kind of nice.
“You want the entire world, but what is the point if there is no one to share it with? Don’t make my mistakes.” Her mother ran a hand over Safiya’s head, unnerving her with that single gesture. When she remained silent, her mother sighed, plucking Safiya’s MTA card from her wallet and handed it back. “You can take the van. I’ll meet you back at the restaurant.”
Deep in thought, Safiya wound her way back. Last-minute stragglers rushed to snag discounted leftovers from the closing booths. She sucked in a breath when she saw their tiny stall.
There was only one plate of juicy lamb chop skewers left. Safiya had only been gone three minutes, maybe five tops.
She watched Haniya heft her backpack over her shoulders and skip away without a single backwards glance, leaving Safiya to close up shop alone. Sometimes she resented Haniya’s carelessness.
A man gunned for the last plate, only increasing his speed when he spotted her moving in the same direction. Safiya caught his gaze and shook her head. Mine, she mouthed.
Relieved her sister managed to save her a plate, Safiya ducked under the awning and quickly flipped the sign to closed. Her wallet slipped from her death grip and fell with a thunk, scattering credit cards across the cement.
“Dammit to hell,” she groaned, scrambling to collect it all, her fingers fumbling. Just her luck to be running late for Chef Bilal’s biryani sampling.
By the time she managed to wrangle everything back into her wallet, her mood took another dip—she spotted the man reaching for the last plate right beside the closed sign.