Exclusive Cover Reveal + Q&A: Samira Ahmed’s The Singular Life of Aria Patel

By Lacy Baugher Milas  |  September 4, 2024 | 10:00am
Books Features Samira Ahmed
Exclusive Cover Reveal + Q&A: Samira Ahmed’s The Singular Life of Aria Patel

Thanks to Marvel, now pretty much everybody knows what the multiverse is. But whether or not you’ve seen Loki or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the concept of different worlds, second chances, and fresh starts is almost universally appealing. Don’t we all wonder, sometimes, what our lives might have looked like if we’d made one singular different choice? Gone to a different college? Said yes to a job relocation? Done something as simple as turn left down a different road? (I see you, Doctor Who fans.)

There’s something oddly thrilling about the idea that somewhere out there in the vastness of space and time, there’s a world where those things happened, where some other version of ourselves is living those different lives. That’s a big part of the idea behind The Singular Life of Aria Patel, the story of a girl who suddenly finds herself falling through parallel universes and struggling to figure out how to return home. 

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It’s why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.  

But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.

As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own. 

 The Singular Life of Aria Patel will hit shelves on May 13, 2025, but we’ve got a first look at its (gorgeous) cover for you 

The Singular Life of Aria Patel cover

We also had the chance to sit down with Ahmed herself for a quick chat about what to expect from her latest novel, how it differs from her previous more contemporary work, and why we’re all so obsessed with multiverse stories. 

Paste Magazine: Tell us about The Singular Life of Aria Patel! What can readers expect from this story? 

Samira Ahmed: Aria Patel is a love story and it’s also a story about asking questions and contemplating the What If’s of life. Aria is a science-obsessed high school senior. She is so focused and practical, she breaks up with her boyfriend before graduation just to avoid the drama of a breakup. She’s a kid who lost her father and feels a bit distant from her mother. And she’s also been getting mysterious headaches. Just as she sees her mom about to get into a possibly fatal car accident, she’s ripped out of her world and thrown into a roller coaster ride through the multiverse, falling from one world into another. 

Eventually, she gets stuck in a world that is so close to her own, with familiar friends, a loving family, a dad who is alive and her boyfriend, who is oh-so perfect. Aria knows she has to get back to try and save her mom, but she’s not sure how and while she’s trying to science her way out of her dilemma she’s falling in love with her new life.

Paste: What can you tease for us about your heroine, Aria, and her journey in this book?

Ahmed: I love Aria so much! She’s a science nerd and she’s funny but she’s also built walls around her that very few people are able to crack. She is pragmatic to a fault and she’s about to find out what happens when her reason begins to war with her passion.

Paste: This is a very different sort of story than some of your recent work, like This Book Won’t Burn or Hollow Fires which both deal with more contemporary, social justice themes. What made you want to tackle a book that was more of a romance? 

Ahmed: I’ve been wanting to write a YA love story for a very long time because of the emotional complexities, joy, and the absolute whirlwind a massive crush can feel like. Even writing this now, I remember the visceral feeling of first love and it can be both profound and earth-shattering (in the case of Aria Patel, maybe even literally). I wanted to write that story! 

And while this novel may be different on the surface from my other books, Aria is very much the type of revolutionary girl character I like to write about—she’s smart, asks questions, makes mistakes, and is forced into a situation where she needs to find her courage to save someone she loves and maybe also save herself all while navigating an almost second-chance romance and the turmoil it causes her heart. 

Paste: What element of the book excited you most while you were writing it? Is there a particular moment (or universe) you can’t wait for readers to experience? 

Ahmed: Creating a fish-out-of-water story in multiple weird worlds was such fun to write. In the multiverse there are infinite possibilities of what different worlds can look like and I have pages of notes of worlds I wanted to write. 

The multiverse can be endless but my book couldn’t be! There’s one world that had me laughing as I wrote it and I can’t wait for readers to dip into that one for a few lighthearted (but drama-filled!) moments–let’s just say when you’re dropped into a world that’s not your own, maybe think twice about randomly kissing the very hot guy standing in front of you. 

Paste: I know Marvel has made everyone kind of tired of this trope right now, but I love a multiverse story! What do you think it is about the idea that we might be simultaneously living many different lives that’s so appealing? 

Ahmed: Multiverse stories are some of my favorites! The Singular Life of Aria Patel is a grounded multiverse–so readers won’t find caped superheroes or fantastical creatures but they’ll find characters, just like themselves, grappling with ordinary problems under extraordinary circumstances. 

I love pondering the idea of what might have been–and I think it is actually a very human question. We’re all born with the possibility of living a thousand different lives, but ultimately we only live one life and every choice we make sets us on that path. But what if we’d chosen a different door to walk through, a different path to walk on, what then? What does our imagining a different life tell us about the one we’re living now? I think it’s natural to have these questions–even if we are living our best lives because humans are curious creatures and that’s one of the coolest things about us.

Aria Patel is a character with endless curiosity and a love of science and I wanted to explore some of those philosophical questions along with more science-y questions, like can the multiverse actually exist (answer: maybe!). It’s so fascinating to think that maybe all of our unlived lives are actually being lived by other versions of us. I like to imagine that maybe in the vast unknown, there’s a Samira who is an astronaut (who doesn’t get motion sickness) or a Samira who is a doctor living her immigrant parents dream (and who doesn’t faint at the site of blood) or a Samira who is about to invent a way to rupture the space-time continuum so we can one day meet. 

The Singular Life of Aria Patel will be released on May 13, 2025, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB

 
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