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A review by readwithmeemz
The Matchmaker's List by Sonya Lalli
2.0
As a desi-Canadian young woman, I was really excited to read this contemporary romance, starring a ‘modern’ desi-Canadian woman, trying to strike balance between her traditional upbringing and her current life.
This book started off really promising, with an interesting protagonist, and exploring what life is often like for children of immigrants, who are brought up and raised in their new country. It touched on tradition and how it evolves, and tried to dig into a complex family unit, and how they fit together.
However, pretty soon, the book lost its luster, and kind of fell apart.
SPOILERS BELOW:
Raina is not a good person, of a likeable character. She is rude, judgmental, and an awful person. Once she started pretending she was gay, the book just became an irredeemable mess.
The book was full of unlikeable characters. None of the relationships make sense - Raina treats her best friend, Shay, like crap, and expects her actually gay friend, Zoe, to be okay with the fact that she is pretending to be gay so her grandma won’t pressure her into marriage. Both forgive her and act okay with the shit she pulls - but she was genuinely awful, and it seemed too easy to forgive her.
I think we were supposed to sympathize with her grandma, but she is manipulative, selfish, and controlling. I still don’t understand the point of Kris as a character - he is barely classified as one dimensional, he doesn’t make any impact in the book, in fact the book would be exactly the same whether or not he was in it. Manu was also just the worst - but she was supposed to be, so that’s fine.
The bits of flashbacks were, I think supposed to make us sympathize with Raina (& eventually Manu) - but there’s only so much you can keep blaming your actions and behaviours on your childhood. Raina was just a bad person. I really disliked Manu throughout the book, and it wasn’t until a flashback near the end, That she started developing as a character, and you started getting context for her actions, but by then, it was too little too late.
Honestly, a disappointing read.
This book started off really promising, with an interesting protagonist, and exploring what life is often like for children of immigrants, who are brought up and raised in their new country. It touched on tradition and how it evolves, and tried to dig into a complex family unit, and how they fit together.
However, pretty soon, the book lost its luster, and kind of fell apart.
SPOILERS BELOW:
Raina is not a good person, of a likeable character. She is rude, judgmental, and an awful person. Once she started pretending she was gay, the book just became an irredeemable mess.
The book was full of unlikeable characters. None of the relationships make sense - Raina treats her best friend, Shay, like crap, and expects her actually gay friend, Zoe, to be okay with the fact that she is pretending to be gay so her grandma won’t pressure her into marriage. Both forgive her and act okay with the shit she pulls - but she was genuinely awful, and it seemed too easy to forgive her.
I think we were supposed to sympathize with her grandma, but she is manipulative, selfish, and controlling. I still don’t understand the point of Kris as a character - he is barely classified as one dimensional, he doesn’t make any impact in the book, in fact the book would be exactly the same whether or not he was in it. Manu was also just the worst - but she was supposed to be, so that’s fine.
The bits of flashbacks were, I think supposed to make us sympathize with Raina (& eventually Manu) - but there’s only so much you can keep blaming your actions and behaviours on your childhood. Raina was just a bad person. I really disliked Manu throughout the book, and it wasn’t until a flashback near the end, That she started developing as a character, and you started getting context for her actions, but by then, it was too little too late.
Honestly, a disappointing read.