Make Me A Match

Cecelia Burns has always taken pains to hide the fact that she is one quarter gypsy. She is a cardiologist with a brilliant career ahead of her. She has a beautiful apartment that she will soon own with her lawyer fiancé Jack. Life is perfect even if she hasn’t come clean to Jack about her family. She’s told him they live in a commune and can’t get away very often.

The night of Cecelia's ultra-chic engagement party, her younger sister Amy - whom she hasn't seen in ten years - shows up, looking every bit the bohemian gypsy. Cecelia is rightly wary of her sister’s sudden appearance. Not only is Amy a consummate squatter, she also possesses a gift: she can read the name of a person’s One True Love simply by touching them.

Amy has come to tell Cecelia her Name and to let her know that she needs to find him because he is dying. While Cecelia believes in Amy’s power, she doesn’t want her life to revolve around her True Love and the quest to find him as it did with her parents. After a horrible childhood touring the country trying to find her Dad’s True Love, and in the process turning Amy’s gift into the basis for a con game, Cecelia wants nothing to do with it.

But Cecelia is a doctor. Hearing that this man is in town (thanks to Google) she writes an anonymous note asking him to get a checkup because she believes he might be in grave danger. When she tries to sneak it into his gym bag at a baseball game in which he’s playing, he catches her and the sparks fly.

Finn Concord is in Baltimore for a few weeks visiting a rent-a-granny for his lonely eight year old daughter. His wife died two years ago and, having a really good puppy dog face along with the makings of a soon-to-be-con artist, his daughter Maya talks him into this trip.

Finn is instantly smitten with Cecelia and is crushed when he finds out that she has a fiancé. Cecelia is honest with him about the whole True Love business and even though he doesn’t quite buy it, he can’t seem to shake his need to see her, even if she’s marrying another man.

The plot goes back and forth a bit with a few interesting twists. The author uses some plot devices I normally don’t care for (i.e. already engaged, uptight woman hiding her true self behind a cold-hearted facade), but in this instance she makes them work.

I could sit and nitpick, analyze and list faults but I won’t. This is not a book to be picked apart. It’s fun, easy, and delightful to read. There is no real villain, which is refreshing and, while not laugh-out-loud funny, it is witty. Cecelia’s sister Amy was a real hoot as was Maya. She isn’t a cute little child who is syrupy sweet. She’s an eight year old with an edge. Finn and Cecelia could have been fleshed out more, yet they were far from flat. Their romance is sweet and funny. I like them very much.

I enjoyed Make Me a Match tremendously. It isn’t deep or emotionally wrought - but it is a book that I would recommend to anyone looking for a feel-good read.

-- Lisa Gardineer

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