Clueless meets Jenna Evans Welch in this young adult rom-com about a spoiled American teenager who faces some major culture shock—and potential romance—when she jets off to Bangladesh for her sister’s wedding.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Priyanka Taslim’s Always Be My Bibi, which is out June 10th 2025.
Bibi Hossain was supposed to get her first kiss this summer.
Too bad her father finds out and grounds her for breaking his most arcane rule: No boys until your sister gets married.
Just when Bibi thinks she’ll be stuck helping him at their popular fried chicken chain until school reopens, her oh-so-perfect older sister Halima drops a bombshell: she’s marrying the heir of a princely estate turned tea garden in Bangladesh. Soon, Bibi is hopping on the next flight to Sylhet for Halima’s Big Fat Bengali Wedding, hoping Abbu might even rethink the dating ban while they’re there.
Unfortunately, the stuffy Rahmans are a nightmare—especially Sohel, the groom’s younger brother. The only thing they can agree on is that their siblings are not a good match. But as the two scheme to break their siblings up, Bibi finds it impossible to stay away from the infuriatingly handsome boy.
Could her own happily ever after be brewing even as she stirs up trouble for her sister’s engagement—or is there more steeping at the tea estate than Bibi knows?
We bring Thathu back to the resort to settle in before the big family dinner.
It takes some convincing from Abbu and my sister, but my grandmother agrees to remain at the resort throughout the wedding festivities.
When we return, the guesthouse is abuzz. Staff members are running around holding freshly laundered towels, carting luggage, and dusting the vases lining the halls. Several of the doors leading to rooms that aren’t ours are now cracked open.
“All this for me?” Thathu jokes.
Abbu frowns and reaches to stop one of the uniformed men pushing a trolley of bags. “What is going on, bhai? Why all the commotion?”
“Rahman Shaab’s sisters have all returned to meet their new bow ma,” the man explains, gesturing to my sister, the bride-to-be in question.
“Oh!” The color drains from Halima’s face. “I—I knew we’d be meeting Sunny’s extended family eventually, of course, but I thought it’d be only our immediate families tonight.”
“How lovely that none of us were informed,” Abbu grunts. “We have relatives of our own we could’ve invited. We could have brought back some of your aunts and uncles from our bari.”
Even Ammu nods, a growing trench between her brows.
“Tik ache, sintha khorben na, they can drive up now,” Thathu suggests, trying to allay their doubts. “This fancy estate has phones to call them, doesn’t it? I see no reason why the Rahmans can’t send a car back out to pick up Halima’s sasas and fufus.”
Abbu grimaces. “This is a deliberate slight. They don’t want more of us here. If we’re such a nuisance to them, we could have booked a suite at Grand Sultan instead.”
I can’t help agreeing with him for once.
If the entire Rahman gushti is here, it’s clear we need to pull out all the stops for this dinner. We retreat strategically to our rooms. Halima chews on her already short fingernails while watching me drag her bags into my room, until Ammu and Thathu arrive with their own belongings and pluck her hands away, tutting at the uneven cuticles.
Throwing her luggage open, I begin rifling through both of our things, holding up outfits, considering each in the mirror for a few seconds before ultimately tossing most aside. Ammu and Thathu provide their own input while Halima stands there posing like a hijabi Barbie.
Finally we’re all satisfied with a long pearl-accented white- gold dress, paired with a matching scarf, pinned to Halima’s freshly washed hair with a Swarovski clip Sunny apparently got for her birthday. After I apply her makeup, all shades of shimmery bronze, my sister smiles up at me, looking like such a bombshell that the Rahmans will have to eat their hearts out.
“That’s enough, Bibi,” she says. “You should start getting dressed too.”
I tap the tip of her nose lightly with the flat of my makeup sponge, making her crinkle it to avoid sneezing from the puff of powder. “Don’t worry, Afu. We’ve got loads of time.”
***
Okay, “loads” might’ve been an overstatement. By the time I put the finishing touches on my makeup in the now empty room, the sun is already creeping below the tree line. I glance at the antique alarm clock next to my bed. Crap. I’m late. The halls of the guesthouse are eerily quiet on my way out. There’s not even a staffer in sight.
“Guys?” I call out. “Where are you?” But the only answering sound is the clack of my Manolo slingbacks on the marble floors. When I get to the courtyard, all the baby taxies are gone. I can’t believe they left without me!
I curse under my breath. Because Abbu took my phone, I don’t even have a way to contact them. Thunder crackles in the distance. Overhead, a large gray cloud hangs low in the sky. I whimper a little bit, already mourning the hair and makeup I just spent an hour getting absolutely perfect.
Grabbing a plain black umbrella from a stand next to the main entrance of the guesthouse, I start the trek to the main house on foot. Aside from the way my heels sink into the soft earth, it isn’t so bad. In fact, the walk is really pretty. I’ve never been a nature girlie, but Bangladesh might change my mind.
That is, at least, until rain begins to fall in heavy sheets. A distant memory of Abbu bemoaning monsoon season tickles the back of my mind. I whimper again, louder this time, knowing the moisture will flatten my hair until I look like a drowned rat, then fluff up like a baby poodle’s upon drying.
Thunder rumbles above and wind lashes at my clothes. I clump up as much of my lehenga as I can with one arm while holding my umbrella with the other. A gust of wind catches the umbrella and it inverts, blowing out of my grasp and landing several inches away, where a path lined with palm trees up to the manor commences. FML.
“Pardon me,” someone calls out. “Can I h—”
I release an undignified squeak-shriek combo at the unexpected voice that crept up right behind me without me noticing. Flinging my body forward, I attempt to use the trunk of a palm tree as a shield. Through the blur of motion and the heavy torrent, I notice an ominous figure on the other side of the tree—like a scarecrow come to life—whose fingers tighten far too close to mine on the wood, inches from making contact.
“Hey, wait!”
He moves as if to copy me, a note of irritation in his voice now, face so shadowed by the conical straw hat on his head that I can’t make out any features except that he’s tall and annoyed with me—a bad combination.
Heart thumping, I throw myself hard in the opposite direction to evade his extended hand. My panicked brain won’t catch up with my legs long enough to force them to leave this spot below the tree and book it toward the house, despite—or maybe because of—all the warnings Ammu and Abbu drummed into my head about never running off alone in Bangladesh. Was I wrong to assume the tea garden was safe?
“Why are you following me?” I demand.
He lunges in my direction. “If you’d just—”
We repeat this awkward dance once more, but when I attempt to dodge him for the fifth time, even as I mentally ask myself what the hell I think I’m doing, something snags behind me and drags me back a step. I yelp, hands reaching automatically for my throat as I come to the sinking realization that the black urna draped around my neck has somehow gotten wound around the prickly bark of the palm tree.
I glance over my shoulder and meet Scarecrow’s eyes. Although I can’t tell whether they’re black or brown, they’re equally round and dumbstruck beneath his now-askew hat and the thick fronds of the tree. They narrow as fat droplets of cold rain start dripping onto my head and shoulders, prompting a shiver I can’t suppress.
When he ventures forward, my fight-or-flight kicks in, and I tug hard on my trapped scarf. Just my luck—in Bollywood movies, girls only get their urnas caught on the button of a gorgeous guy’s fanjabi sleeve or his watch, not on a tree while some scarecrow-looking creep looms over them. Why did Shah Rukh Khan lie to me?
“I know karate!” I warn Scarecrow. Even with the hat tipped over his face, I feel like he’s eyeing me incredulously—which, rude. I actually do have a white belt!
I tense as he ventures closer, then gawk when he says, “Would you quit it? You’re going to tear your urna if you don’t stop.” For some reason, this gives me pause. I suck in a sharp breath as he closes the distance between us, but he only takes the hat off his head and plunks it onto mine with a droll, “And you’re getting wet.”
Before I can splutter a response, he pulls the brim down over my eyes—but not so fast that I don’t spot the smirk that curls his lips. I squawk in indignation, lifting my hands away from my scarf to fix the hat so I can see again. The sight that greets me isn’t the one I expected.
Scarecrow is kneeling in front of me, uncaring of the fact that his pants are getting soggy and muddy. He holds my scarf taut in one hand, while the long, slim fingers of the other carefully remove it from the palm tree without damaging either the embroidery or the bark. Once it’s free and returned into my custody, he looks up at me with a pair of flashing brown eyes.
“Are you mad?” my savior and/or potential kidnapper inquires.
I mean to ask “W-what?” but instead my traitorous mouth supplies, “Hot?”
Because he is.
Hot, that is.
He’s all angles, save for the soft, disapproving set of his full pink lips, the bangs that swoop onto his forehead, notes of russet glinting through dark strands, and his matching warm earthy-brown irises. Tall and slender and almost pretty, with enviably dewy golden-brown skin that’s probably never seen a pimple in his life. The flush and slight breathiness from the exertion of our impromptu dance only makes him more attractive. Considering he looks like a teenager, perhaps my age or a year or two older, that is decidedly unfair, but as I know well from my sister, God plays favorites.
His brows furrow as concern replaces displeasure. “Are you having a heat stroke?”
“No!” I retort, my senses returning just in time for me to jerk away from the back of his wrist when he stands and makes a motion to, presumably, press it against my forehead. What happened to Bangladeshi boundaries? “I’m—I’m fine! And—and—and—just because you look, er, nice, doesn’t mean you are, so you’d better keep your distance or else!”
I snatch up my dropped broken umbrella and wield it like a sword, though I’m not sure that’ll amount to much if he does prove to be a kidnapper.
“I look . . . nice?” he asks, puzzled. “Thank you?”
Heat rises all the way to the tips of my ears. Of course a guy who looks like him would be full of himself, but I wasn’t quite expecting him to come right out and agree. “You are so not welcome. You never told me why you were chasing me.”
“Ch-chasing you?” he parrots, affront lifting his brows into his hairline as he splays a hand across his chest. “I was not chasing you. What do you think I am, some pervert?”
“I don’t know you,” I counter, “so maybe you are!”
Shooting me a dirty look, he moves to stoop behind the tree and retrieve something. I stiffen and withdraw another step into the rain, grateful for the straw hat even if I’m wary of him. Despite his assurances to the contrary, I still harbor some doubts that he won’t pull out something like a machete, the preferred weapon of the headhunting kuskors from the stories Thathu used to tell me and Halima.
Most of Thathu’s stories were scary, in fact, in her effort to ensure we were always safely chaperoned by one of our adult relatives. They were tales of zinn and buuth, tigers who’d swallow you whole, kidnappers who would hold you for ransom if they knew you were from abroad, or traffickers who’d sell your organs for money.
I always envisioned them as menacing when I was a kid, but it makes more sense that they’d be disarmingly handsome, like the boy kneeling in front of me. Most people would let their guards down in his presence.
Not me, though!
The boy in question eyes me as he slowly, ever so slowly, holds up—an umbrella? A parasol? Is there a difference? I’m so surprised that I let my own useless umbrella tumble from my lax fingers, which he takes as a sign to step closer and open his above both of our heads.
“Um,” comes my intelligent reaction.
“I was not chasing you,” he repeats, exasperated. “I was minding my own business when, to my surprise, I saw an unfamiliar girl standing under a tree in the pouring rain. Obviously it’s monsoon season. Anyone in their right mind would keep a functional umbrella on them, or at least know not to stand beneath tall trees that might attract lightning.”
I look up at his umbrella. It consists of several watercolor shades of green, shinier than any I’ve ever seen before, a see-through lacquered material with painted flowering branches visible when held against the lightning that illuminates the sky, each spoke attached to what looks like a carved leaf. Cute, my malfunctioning brain supplies, an utterly unhelpful thought.
The boy, who isn’t a kidnapper, sighs and places the handle of the umbrella in my listless hand, even moving to close my fingers around it when I don’t do so myself. It’s chilly out here, I realize, the downpour worsening by the minute.
We stare at each other for a moment, his eyes expectant. When it becomes apparent that Bibi.exe has stopped functioning and won’t reboot anytime soon, he gusts a longsuffering sigh and deftly removes the conical hat from my head, returning it to his. “Well. I’ll be off, then.”
“You work here,” I blab just as he makes to amble toward the main house.
He turns back reluctantly. “Yes . . . ?”
I want to smack myself. Obviously he works here, when he’s wearing the deep emerald green uniform of the rest of the hospitality staff, nearly black beneath the cloud-cast sky, with a small, golden tea leaf over the left breast pocket, matching the trim on the collar and the cuffs of the long sleeves. Even his graceful fingers have dark smudges on them, though those might be my fault for making him stoop on the ground, rather than because he was plucking tea leaves.
My face scorches from the humiliation of that revelation as I mumble, “Um, I’m sorry about earlier. Ithoughtyouwereakidnapper!”
“You thought I was a . . .” It takes him a minute to decipher the rapid-fire jumble of words, and then he barks a laugh so loud, I jump and almost whack him with the umbrella. When I realize he’s laughing at me, I wish I had whacked him. He must see the dawning fury on my face, because he wipes the tears from his eyes and clears his throat. In a more somber tone of voice, he continues with a hand on his chest, “I apologize for scaring you, but . . .”
“But?” I prompt when he doesn’t complete the thought.
His eyes flick over my frame briefly before he shrugs. “I don’t think you have to worry about any kidnappers here. We have security. Only ticketed guests can enter, though currently the resort is closed for a private party.”
My grip tightens on the umbrella as displeasure ripples through me. Oh, so he doesn’t think I’m worthy of kidnapping, eh? Just because he’s so tall and pretty, and with that lilting (British?) accent I’m only now realizing is very fluent compared to most of the staff.
He blinks when I continue to death glare at him for several seconds straight. “What could I have possibly done to upset you now? Did you get concussed by a falling coconut? That’s why one generally avoids dancing under palm trees.”
I could tell him to buzz off since the umbrella’s in my possession, but . . . he did bring it to me out of genuine concern for my well-being, freed me from the tree, and let me borrow his hat.
I plaster on a simpering smile that makes Not a Kidnapper do an alarmed double take. “Can you please help me, sir? My family is supposed to have dinner with the Rahmans tonight, but I’m late and don’t know where to go.” I bat my eyelashes.
His own eyes narrow with healthy, calculating skepticism, even as he mouths the word “Sir?” like it’s sour on his tongue. He looks like he might be considering reporting me to security but ultimately concedes with a begrudging, “Right then, come along, miss. I’ll make sure you make it there safely.”
He starts walking ahead of me. I stand there for a second, fuming at that last jab at my expense, then hurry to match his long-legged strides so I can lift the umbrella over both of our heads. My shorter arms strain from the effort. Not a Kidnapper side-eyes me. He shakes his head like he can’t quite believe he’s in this predicament. For an instant I think a more authentic smile of amusement might be spreading across his lips—but by the time he takes the umbrella from me, the smile is gone, no more than a figment of my imagination.
We step through the ginormous double doors side by side.
