“The more often you go on dates, the more you start to feel like you’re dating yourself.”

Match Made in Manhattan follows Alison on her fast paced introduction to the technology of modern dating. Through her profile on Match.com, we are introduced to various men via dating profiles, text threads, email chains and of course, the actual dates.

After Alison finds herself single, after two long-term relationships, she comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t really know how to date. After much encouragement from friends and roommates, she sets up a profile on dating site, Match.com. And while she finds herself with quite the roster of interested men, and interesting men, she isn’t sure she’s doing more than meeting friends rather than dating.

All that changes though when she meets Luke, a folk singer turned investment banker, who Alison finds absolutely irresistible. But the more Alison finds herself drawn in, the more he seems to keep her back. Will Luke end up being her Match?

While this book is more than a typical romcom, and has the very realistic glimpse into the online dating world, the book itself was sort of a miss for me. I laughed at some parts, and enjoyed the humor in going on some very wrong first dates.

“If I learned one lesson from Tom, it was that no matter what signal you think you’re sending out, it can, and probably will, get misinterpreted by the male species.”

However, I had a very difficult time relating to Alison, which made it difficult to really sink in and enjoy. I found myself rolling my eyes more than not, and not over the outlandish men, those felt real enough, but at Alison herself.

Match Made in Manhattan was a fast read, and for someone just wanting to laugh at the trials and tribulations of the modern dating age, this book will offer a humorous look into exactly that.

The next pieces could contain spoilers, so if you don’t want to read plot points, please be warned!!!

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To start with, she signs up for Match a mere three weeks after her boyfriend of three years breaks up with her. I can relate to a lot of women in the world, but one who moves from two back to back long term relationships into online dating with barely time to grieve the relationship in between just isn’t someone I identify with. Throughout the book she moves that quickly, bouncing back from breakups to responding to emails within days, sometimes the same day.

And I didn’t quite get her entire dating philosophy. She wants to meet someone with long term potential before sleeping with them, fine, but holding hands? Kissing? I don’t know many people in their late thirties with quite that many issues regarding physical touch. So for me, she felt unreal. Alison and I would not be a Match.

The format of the book felt a little choppy to me when reading. Some pieces feel like the normal novel plot I’m used to, and then other times it felt like snapshots of profiles or dates that didn’t have a piece in the plot other than to showcase the bad or weird dates. Which was fine, but it felt a bit jarring at times, which pulled me out of the book.

Romcoms don’t have to end in wedding bells and happily ever afters. I appreciate the attempt at her finding her own way without the help of a website. But, and this is a big but, rather than seeming to come across as independent, Alison felt more superficial and emotionally stunted.

She misses every single clue Luke lays out for her, all the while whining that she isn’t sure he’s as committed as she wants him to be. She essentially wants him to do all the work, while she won’t even deactivate her Match account, AFTER HE ASKS HER TO. I mean, COME ON!

Fine, she didn’t read the signs, but even after, when it comes to finally reaching out to her year long texting buddy Greg, who clearly is interested, she decides that THIS is her most functional relationship and she doesn’t want to ruin it.

I don’t know. She felt terrified of actual emotional investment, which makes her really hard to like in a romcom environment. I would have been much more satisfied if she had been at some point forced to face her own issues in some way, and THEN went off by herself into the sunset to live a more emotionally healthy life.

Thank you BookSparks for sending me a copy to read and review as part of #WRC2018!