Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Matchmaking for Beginners, by Maddie Dawson {ends 6/5}

And I—I am just a damaged object they're all trying to patch up and haul back onto the sales floor. They love me and they will sit with me while I find the necessary prerequisites for their estimation of a happy life: a new job, a new man, a car, and later on, furniture, a house, some babies. I need endless help, apparently.

In the meantime, they say, here's the story we're giving you: California was a mistake. Your life up to now has been a big, blurry mistake, but luckily you're moving on. We caught you just in time.

My California life, my adulthood, quietly folds itself up like a map and tiptoes away. Nobody but me even sees it go.

I really enjoyed this book, and later I realized that the author wrote another novel I also reviewed, The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness. This novel was very different from that one, but still just as good.

Official synopsis:

Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life—a husband, kids, and a minivan in the suburbs. Now that she’s marrying the man of her dreams, she’s sure this is the life she’ll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiancé’s irascible matchmaking great-aunt who’s dying, and everything changes—just as Blix told her it would.

When her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked. She’s even more astonished to find that she’s inherited Blix’s Brooklyn brownstone along with all of Blix’s unfinished “projects”: the heartbroken, oddball friends and neighbors running from happiness. Marnie doesn’t believe she’s anything special, but Blix somehow knew she was the perfect person to follow in her matchmaker footsteps.

And Blix was also right about some things Marnie must learn the hard way: love is hard to recognize, and the ones who push love away often are the ones who need it most.

Marnie is engaged to Noah, and she meets his "kooky" great-aunt Blix at their engagement party. Blix senses a kindred soul in Marnie: they're both "matchmakers," meaning they know things and they know who might work best together. Despite the fact that their meeting was short, when Blix passes away a few months later, she leaves her Brooklyn brownstone to Marnie—who has never been to New York, much less Brooklyn.

Once the New York part of the book starts, it reminded me of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt a bit (which also takes place in Brooklyn)—the brownstone is large and Blix had tenants, which makes Marnie's decision to stay or to sell the brownstone a bit harder, even though her life (and new fiancee—not Noah!) is now back in her home state of Florida.

The characters were all very well thought-out here, too, and although I had a feeling how the book would end—Blix kind of predicts it early on, actually—I still was curious to see how the author would get the characters to that point.

4.5 stars out of 5.
{click here to purchase}

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.

GIVEAWAY:

Three of my lucky readers will win a copy of Matchmaking for Beginners!

Enter to win via the widget below. Giveaway will end on Wednesday, June 5th, at 11:59pm EST, and winners will be notified via email the next day, and have 24 hours to respond, or an alternate winner(s) will be chosen.

U.S. and Canadian residents only, please.

Good luck!

Matchmaking for Beginners book