The Art of Taking Up Space

Zara Rinaaz is a plus-size doctor who has spent most of her life learning how to make herself smaller.

In dressing rooms. In conversations. In social interactions. And around people who looked at women like her and saw a problem before they saw a person.

She has PCOD, a period that shows up roughly as often as a solar eclipse, and a very practiced smile she wears like armour.

She is not the girl this kind of story happens to.

She's a junior ophthalmology resident with sensible shoes, excellent diagnostic skills, and a very firm policy against complications.

Alexander Malhotra is a complication.

He is thirty one years old, absurdly handsome, and currently, one of the fastest rising actors in the industry.

He's also, unfortunately, her patient.

His face stares down at Zara from a luxury watch advertisement on the highway she takes every week to buy groceries - all expensive watches, perfectly undone dark hair, and a jawline unfair enough to deserve its own management team.

The Art of Taking Up Space is a slow-burn contemporary romance about self-worth, longing, identity, and what it takes to believe you deserve love without first earning permission to exist.