First published 2025
The unnamed narrator holds a PhD but scrapes by as an adjunct professor in Los Angeles. Two years after graduation, the middle-class security her immigrant parents achieved seems impossible to reach. Her best friend Adam jokes that she should marry for money. She takes him seriously. Armed with her doctoral research on marriage across cultures, she creates a spreadsheet and commits to 100 dates before fall semester starts. The summer brings martini meetings with construction heirs, board games with wealthy producers, and awkward dinners with Orange County surgeons. Her methodical hunt for a rich spouse grows increasingly frantic. Then tragedy strikes her family in Tehran. The crisis forces her back to Iran and makes her confront the contradictions driving her Los Angeles life. As her marriage scheme unravels, she begins to see that her ideal partner might have been close by all along.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: bittersweet, darkly-comedic, intimate, introspective, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-crisis, fish-out-of-water, friends-to-lovers, self-discovery
Setting: Los Angeles, Orange County, Tehran, Iran
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
320 pages · Paperback · Algonquin Books
Content warnings: death