The Match By Sarah Abrams

Rating: it was okay 

Genre: romance {closed]

Format: Audio from NetGalley (Rusty Mewha & Leanne Woodward)

(Re-)Published: July 2, 2024 by Dell Romance

Soundtrack: I Think He Knows-Taylor Swift

So, I am a big believer that not every book is for every person, yet not loving a book is still incredibly frustrating.  There were several things I felt this book did well: I loved the representation of epilepsy in two different characters. Adams did a fantastic job showing how it impacted both daily living and the insecurities it added to dating. I enjoyed the dual POV and I LOVED Jake the father. He was the brother/girl dad of my dreams; between his nonchalance towards menstruation and his obviously overwhelming love for his daughter, I was full-on swooning.

The narration was okay. I don’t particularly care for the imitation of female voices by male narrators, and since all of the major supporting characters were female, Rusty Mewha, who narrated our MMC, Jake, had to do a lot of female southern voices. Leanne Woodward did a good job, but I was bothered that Evie was described as having a southern lilt and that the narration did not. For some reason, the text exchanges were done as a duet, but the remainder was not, and that felt like a missed opportunity. 

So you know I loved The Rule Book, and I really wanted to love this. I think had I read this first, I would have enjoyed it more, but after knowing what she can write, this felt like a rough draft. I can tell her writing has involved (and probably better editing, but I can’t find their names despite my internet searches). There were moments when the conversations just felt cringe with silly banter.  I wanted more relationship development and deeper interactions between Jake and Evie and the secondary characters. Evie had frequent self-doubt in the beginning, and it seemed exhausting to listen to. Finally, the insta-love (even over the course of a few weeks) bothers me every time. 

I can’t seem to end on a negative, so while this was a miss for me, I still want to read at least one other book off her backlist!

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