Review copy provided by the publisher
I enjoyed The Matchmaker’s List, but I think it’s miscast as a rom-com. If you go in expecting a funny romp you’re going to be surprised and disappointed. In the same way that a romantic comedy was extracted from Kevin Kwan’s novel, Crazy Rich Asians, you could do the same with The Matchmaker’s List. At its heart, The Matchmaker’s List is contemporary fiction. It’s a family drama and a cultural and community drama…that has arranged marriage and some cringeworthy dates integrated into it. For me, the romance is its weakest element.
Raina Anand is a 29-year-old economist who agrees to let her Nani set her up on a series of dates with “pre-approved” husband material. With Old Maid-dom right around the corner, it’s what a good (grand) daughter does. In the process, Raina struggles to balance her own happiness with familial and community expectations.
Raina is an incredibly flawed protagonist, but she also recognizes when she has dug herself a hole that’s going to be tough to escape. A confluence of events leads her to tell an egregious lie that will probably alienate a lot of readers. She navigates the bad dates her Nani sets her up on, while pining for a guy who strings her along and disappoints her, repeatedly. She’s a bad friend and cousin, but when you get glimpses of her absentee mother, it starts to make sense. That’s when, despite all of Raina’s shortcomings, Sonya Lalli gets the reader to empathize her.
The book moves along at a good clip and Lalli paints a vivid picture of Raina’s community in Toronto. Though I’m not South Asian, it was familiar: the influential (and judgmental) Aunties, the lingering stain on a family caused by a rebellious child, the generational conflict over conforming to accepted community “norms” and making room for evolving social attitudes.
Raina does get a happily ever after, but don’t come for the romance. The Matchmaker’s List‘s real strength is its contemporary look at what it can be like for a woman to have a foot in two cultures and to struggle with finding her own equilibrium, especially as her thirties bear down on her.
3.5 stars
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