REVIEW: Playing with Matches by Hannah Orenstein

Title: Playing with Matches
Author: Hannah Orenstein
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: June 2018
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Women’s Fiction
Buy The Book: Amazon | BN | Audible

Description: In the tradition of Good in Bed and The Assistants comes a funny and smart comedy about a young matchmaker balancing her messy personal life and the demands of her eccentric clients.

Sasha Goldberg has a lot going for her: a recent journalism degree from NYU, an apartment with her best friend Caroline, and a relationship that would be amazing if her finance-bro boyfriend Jonathan would ever look up from his BlackBerry. But when her dream career falls through, she uses her family’s darkest secret to land a job as a matchmaker for New York City’s elite at the dating service Bliss.

Despite her inexperience, Sasha throws herself into her new career, trolling for catches on Tinder, coaching her clients through rejection, and dishing out dating advice to people twice her age. She sets up a TV exec who wanted kids five years ago, a forty-year-old baseball-loving virgin, and a consultant with a rigorous five-page checklist for her ideal match.

Sasha hopes to find her clients The One, like she did. But when Jonathan betrays her, she spirals out of control—and right into the arms of a writer with a charming Southern drawl, who she had previously set up with one of her clients. He’s strictly off-limits, but with her relationship on the rocks, all bets are off.

Fresh, sweet, and laugh-out-loud funny, Playing with Matches is the addictive story about dating in today’s swipe-heavy society, and a young woman trying to find her own place in the world.

My Thoughts: First of all, I have to start this review by advising that this book is not as funny or a romantic comedy as the book description would have you believe. I thought it would be more chick-lit fun, and though there were some humorous moments, I wouldn’t classify this as a comedy or a chick-lit story, but rather a contemporary romance or women’s fiction. This isn’t a bad thing, but if you are looking for a rom com, you may feel disappointed.

Secondly, I really enjoy matchmaking and online dating tropes. In this case, the main character, Sasha, isn’t looking for a date, she’s the matchmaker and newly employed at an up and coming online dating agency called Bliss. She utilizes Tinder to troll for prospective dates for her clients. Don’t spend a lot of time pondering any ethical or moral integrity violations Sasha may be committing by poaching another dating service’s clients, who her company refers to as recruits. Just suspend your disbelief on this issue.

In spite of that moral dilemma, I thought the initiative Sasha takes to find matches for her clients was inventive and interesting. Can you imagine someone swipes right on your profile and then proceeds to tell you that they are a matchmaker and have a client that they think would be a good fit and there’s no cost to you, so win-win!

The most interesting part of this story was that all of Bliss’s clients and recruits are off-limits to the matchmakers. I think the recruits being part of that policy is a bit extreme, especially if they are not actively dating one of Bliss’s clients, but I don’t make the rules and Sasha doesn’t seem to care about the rules after her boyfriend betrays her and one of the recruits she had been talking to gets a whole lot more interesting.

I really liked Sasha and admired her spirit and willingness to take on a job that really isn’t what she was intending to do with her journalism degree, but a girl’s got to eat, right? I also liked tagging along with Sasha on her matchmaking duties and enjoyed some of the lengths she went to secure dates for her clients. The supporting characters add a lot of interesting moments too.

My Final Verdict: Overall, this book is a story that is more about a woman’s willingness to rise above the struggles life hands us, keeping her eye on the goal and finding herself and her place in the world. I highly recommend this book to readers who like to root for the underdog to win, even if it’s not the win you thought they would get.

Thank you to the publisher, Atria Books, who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.