Free on Kindle. Spoilers. This is an odd book. The main character is an author who doesn't write about love, but then he goes on vacation, meets a woman, and decides to write about love. He copies her for the female lead and doesn't realize he is falling in love with her until it is too late.

Author's guest post at my blog:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2012/12/foodfic-once-mian-mohsin-zia.html

Original post here: http://offbeatvagabond.blogspot.com/2012/11/indie-book-review-once-ask-me-anythi...

Once (Ask Me Anything, Not Love) is a story about a successful novelist named 'M---, No Time For Love' aka Morkel. Morkel doesn't ever use a female protagonist. He doesn't see the need to have a woman be the focus of his books or his life. He has never been inspired enough to have a main one is his books. But things change when he visits Ukraine where he meets a woman that has changed his perception on life. But he doesn't realize how much he has changed until it is to late.

I really enjoyed our main character Morkel, well more towards the end of the book to be honest. I won't lie, I wanted to punch the mess out of him in this book. It is not so much he was a bad guy, but just the fact he was acting like the typical guy. He was so selfish and worried about his image, he couldn't see what was in front of him. He observes people for his books, but doesn't much pay attention to their emotions. I loved Maya. I can see how she inspired Morkel so much. She was so sweet and innocent and it kept me on edge to see what would happen between her and Morkel.

This is one of those reads that will stick with me for a very long time. I finished it yesterday and I have been thinking about it all day. Wow, what a storyteller Zia is. The story was paced so well and had moments that just killed me. Morkel meets Maya and is instantly enthralled with her. She wants to learn more English and he lies to her by telling her she is an English teacher. He doesn't want to be seen as the famous novelist. He says people put on a face when he tells them he is a writer. This is the perfect example of how one simple thing can change everything. I found myself shouting at the book at times. This story just pulled at me and didn't let go.

I was bouncing all over the place on what to give this. Like I said, Morkel made some questionable choices. There were things he did that made me quite angry. For instance, the flight scene had me raging. Morkel likes to go out of his way to comfort perfect strangers at a funeral of someone he has never met. But when it came time to comfort Maya, he ran off and left her. Again, I was pissed. And when he actually took flight, it still wasn't the first thing he thought of. He was excited about his book more. But his change in the end was so uplifting. I won't lie, I had tears in my eyes.

I don't want to give away anything, but this book truly blew me away. It was just so powerful and enlightening. The emotions that went through me reading this were so overwhelming and heart wrenching. There were times I had to stop and take a breather a time or two. This isn't your everyday contemporary romance. It belongs in a class of its own. The ending is so emotionally draining and I know not everything can be tied up into a perfect little bow, but dammit, I shall beg for a sequel. I don't think this review did this book justice. You just have to read this for yourself. Truly incredible. ( )

‘M---, No Time for Love’ is an author who writes English novels. He sees no need to include women in his novels, and certainly no need for a female protagonist. With no future projects in mind, he flies to Kiev, Ukraine, for a holiday. Here, where no one knows him, he can be an ordinary person. M attends a funeral, then a wedding where he knows no one.

A beautiful woman stops him to remind him to tie his shoes. He rushes out to catch her, to find out more about this woman with the lustrous face and emerald eyes. She is amazed at the compassion and virtue she finds in his rare moment of truthfulness. They meet, again by accident, at the Globus market. He is touched by the “God Bless You” that once again precedes her goodbye. “It is her style, the Maya style. She has a charismatic personality, and her aura is impeccable.”

She, raised by Catholic nuns, finds in the ordinary Morkel, the love she has never known, except the love of God. M--- finds her innocence, and the peace and comfort he finds in her presence, captivating. Here, he discovers the female protagonist for which his publisher and his readers have been clamoring. However, he says, “if we could foresee the future, then many of our problems could be resolved; I could have saved myself from the mistake of a lifetime.”

Words are to the literary novelist and poet, what color is to a master painter, or notes to a gifted composer. Zia packs a lifetime of love, loss, melancholy, and forgiveness in 142 pages of masterful prose written in first person. He includes three poems to earmark and reread for themselves. I have only felt the undercurrents of such powerful depths in today’s words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Khalid Hosseini.

Zia’s novel portends much for his honor of Allah and his country, Pakistan. I believe that the combination of the power of faith and the uncertainty of a homeland in the currents of change may be the gristmill that produces such true and profound works. This is a book or E-book to place where it can be read over and over and over again, for each time there will be something new to discover and savor, whether you read it in English or in Russian.

The author gave me a copy of this book for my unbiased review. ( )