Make Me a Match

Make Me a Match #1

by Diana Holquist

Cecilia Burns's To-Do List:

1. Pick out wedding dress and ignore psychic sister who says I'm marrying the wrong guy.

2. Really ignore her when she says the right guy is some stranger named Finn Concord, who's dying, and this is my last chance to experience my One True Love of a lifetime. Ever.

3. Okay, fine. Find this Finn guy, tell him he's dying, and split. Quick.

4. Stop staring at him... even though he does look pretty good for a guy who's on his last legs. Oh god, those unforgettable eyes... those strong arms. And those kissable lips...

5. Take a deep breath and remember that psychics lie too, just like everyone else.

6. Then again, maybe there is something to this One True Love business after all. There's only one way to find out...

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Paranormal, Adult

368 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

The Official Bio

I love to write. That’s pretty much all I do. Ask my family about the undone laundry, the un-bought groceries, and the fact that I rarely find time to get dressed in the morning. Actually, if you train your family right, they won’t notice any of these things. "Popcorn for dinner again, mom! Cool," say my filthy children. God bless them, they don’t know what panty hose are.

Oh, my poor husband.

Anyway, it took me a long time to figure out WHAT to write. So I spent years writing ads, brochures, and company reports. If I had to give advice to anyone--which, thankfully, I don’t--it would be that if you want to write books, start now. In fact, get the heck off this website and do it.

(First, throw your TV out the window. Good. Now write.)

Are you still here?

Okay, then you must be a pure reader (or my mother). Good for you. No money in writing. Best to have a real job.

What else do you want to know about me? I love kids. I love cats. I love chocolate. (Not necessarily in that order.) I live just outside of Philadelphia with kids and cats and my dear husband.

Reviews

[ChloeLeeNH · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a cute story. Sort of a breaking down of an uptight woman... who is hiding her wild past. The work it took for these two to get together was too funny and clever and they seemed like a good fit. Great start to a light uplifting series. Looking forward to the next!

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

All Cecelia Burns needed to do was shop for her wedding dress and make sure she had the perfect wedding but no instead she ends up dealing with a sister she hasn’t seen in a long time and for good reasons. Even though Cecelia and Amy come from a gypsy family, only Amy dresses, acts and claims to be able to tell people their true love’s name unlike Cecelia who wants to live a normal stress-free live.

Amy tells Cecelia that she is making a mistake as her true love is named Finn Concord. Cecelia doesn’t believe Amy and decides to ignore Amy but it’s a little hard to do that when your sister tells you that your true love is about to die. Being a medical doctor, Cecelia would feel bad if she didn’t warn Finn that he was about to die even if she has no intensions to be with him. Cecelia has the perfect plan…it’s foolproof. Cecelia will drop off an anonymous note to Finn.

Finn doesn’t know quite what to make of Cecelia. Here’s this gorgeous woman who has an interest in him but she sure has a strange way of showing it by leaving him a note saying he will die. All Finn knows is that he will figure out just what type of game Cecelia is playing once and for all.

Everyone in this story was so much fun from Cecelia to Maya, Finn’s daughter and even Amy. Maya was like a sixty-year old chain smoking, card hustling little girl who was so much older beyond her years. As much as Amy annoyed Cecelia they still loved each other as sisters do. Make Me a Match had me smiling and laughing throughout the whole book. Every book I have picked up and read of Diana Holquist has turned out a winner and this one is no exception. For anyone who is a fan of romances will love Mrs. Holquist.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a totally unrealistic story about a widowed guy with his young daughter.  She’s ready to go to college and very worried about him being alone. He hasn’t dated in the 10 years since his wife died and his daughter buys him three sessions with a “relationship coach”. Basically I’ll define a “relationship coach” as someone to help him learn how to socialize again and definitely move him out of the caveman age. And of course, she hopes he’ll meet a match. The outcome is not only funny but also entertaining to read. This has a little of the paranormal included as his wife communicates with him a bit; at least he thinks she does. His mother seems to have a second sense but some might argue all mothers do. There is a lot of humor here and the characters are well defined. 

I was going to say that I thought the sex was a little more explicit than I would normally be comfortable reading.  However…I can’t even find a way to define why I felt this way. So, I’m going to explain it another way. I’m not sure that this romance had any more sexual content than any other. Since I can’t even define what this means, you could say that Lucas is very good at scene description. Making readers feel any emotion with mere words on a page is what I’d call real writing. The characters were definitely made to come alive through Lucas’ descriptions and the whole story was well-rounded. I think the humor lightened certain parts of the story too. Anyway you define it, it is a story about life aspects many of us go through.

While I might have been a little uncomfortable reading about the sex here, I didn’t miss a page of the book.  Read it and see what you think. Come back and let me know what you thought.

***This book was provided to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review.

[Rachel Nunes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started out really well, and with a great premise, but it quickly became something I wasn't interested in. If you like Harlequin-type books, you may enjoy this novel. The overal idea and plot were intact, but I didn't care for the delivery. I've never read anything else from this author so I'm not sure if I'd feel the same about her other books.

[Jo Reads Romance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weak and mediocre romance
3 stars

Cecelia Burns' life is just the way she always dreamed it would be. She's got a great job, a great apartment and she's marrying the most stable, upstanding guy that she could dream of. Everything is going perfectly until her psychic sister crashes her engagement party and claims that she's marrying the wrong guy and that the right guy, her one true love, is dying.

Finn Concord doesn't believe in True Love but he is smitten with Cecelia Burns even if she does seem to think he's dying. But with his lonely daughter, her rent-a-granny, psychics and enough other Finn Concords to make your mind boggle - winning Cecelia's heart is going to take quite a lot of work.

It took me a while to get into this book and I suppose that should have been some indication of the story as a whole. It wasn't hard to finish but I felt little to no emotional connection with the stories or the characters.

I wanted to like Cecelia but she was a little uptight and mean, especially to her sister. I know she was supposed to be like that and loosen up as the novel progressed but she was just very hard to like at times. I also didn't think her reactions rang true and I wondered if Finn would be better off without her. Finn was a little more likeable as a rugged construction worker but I felt he wasn't strong enough to handle Cecelia and he was obviously so hung up on his first wife that I didn't think he was ready to move on.

The psychic stuff and the storyline overall was fine and handled well it was just that everything was too convenient and too bizarre to make it believable, even with the magic.

I finished this book and was rooting for the characters but in the end it just didn't do much for me. A good read if it's on your bookshelf but nothing I would run out and recommend. 3 stars.

This book is followed by Jasmine's story in Sexiest Man Alive and Amy's story in Hungry for More.

[Evie Upadhyay · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, I need to rant on this one. The main character in this book got on my nerve, constantly. The story started with some strong characters but only one who stood out was the sister Amy, and all for the wrong reasons. Amy is immature, selfish and doesn't care about others not even her own sister. Also, the things Amy got away with was baffling. Cecelia is a smart woman who was a con artist and then turned her life around and became a freaking doctor. Why was she letting Amy get away with stealing and throwing a bomb (AKA her One True Love's name, which I might add that she asked Amy to never tell her, on her engagement party with another guy) and also being out of contact for 10 freaking years. These two sisters had been together for a long time and knew each other pretty well so why was Cecelia not asking the obvious questions any human being would ask and overlooking all the things Amy did? And the way they are about their other sister, Jasmine, made me very angry.

Moving away from the sister's relationship, the story about Finn and Cecelia was fine but again somewhat annoying. The first half of the story about their budding relation was OK but Cecelia started being annoying again. The thing where she believed that she doesn't deserve her One True Love and even if she did, it will not be a good match got to me. Shees... I cannot really abide self-pity. And at this point, I should also mention that I do not really believe in ONE true love. I believe in love, sure, but that there is only ONE true love out there for you is bull. People change, circumstances change and love change. If she feels strongly towards the carpenter Finn then he is her true love, accept it and get on with it. At this point, I thought that the story was dragging a little. The only high I got in this book was the part where Cecelia got her revenge on Amy. That was nice as she definitely needed it.

Overall the book was not so good and I am definitely not going to suggest this book to anyone I know but I do think I will try to read the second book on this series as it is about Jasmine and I am quite intrigued about her. I hope the second one is better than this.

[Quinn Fforde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly entertaining

[Elizabeth Plav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cecilia - a cardiologist living in Baltimore - is enjoying her engagement party when her gypsy sister Amy (who she hasn't seen in 10 years) decides to crash it. Amy has an unusual psychic power, which is to be able to hear the Name of the person who is your True Love. Cecilia made Amy promise never to tell her, but Amy comes and tells her she's marrying the wrong man. The name of her True Love is Finn Franklin Concord and he's going to die soon.

The was actually a very enjoyable read - I wasn't sure whether I'd like it or not. There were some unexpected twists and turns but overall, I'm a happy reader. Would like to read the other books about the gypsy sisters (they have a missing sister named Jasmine).

[Alina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

There were several things wrong with this book:
1) The One True Love self-fulfilling prophecy and how much Cecilia dreaded and believed it - I mean, really?
2) Finn was completely unbelievable, shoddily characterized, and stupid. In fact, I enjoyed the book much more before he came on the scene. It felt like Cecilia never did fall in love with him, but remained in Lust with him for the rest of the book.
3) The development of the relationship between Finn and Cecilia was sketchy at best, and not believable.
3) I only liked Amy, and will probably read the sequel for her story, but not any time soon.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the start of this novel. It was interesting and whilst rather cliched it still managed to get my attention. However, I didn't really like where it went after that. There were many points in the story where I thought that it was going to finish. But no, it kept going on and on. And whilst part of me liked that I was getting value for money, the other part of me got slightly annoyed that it just wouldn't finish.

At the end, nearly all of the loose ends were managed to be tied up, but I felt somewhat unsatisfied by how it was done. All in all it was an entertaining story that was quite sweet, but not one that I'd read again.

[Maria Elmvang · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've wanted to read this ever since I reviewed the sequel, "Sexiest Man Alive" for Armchair Interviews. Unfortunately it couldn't quite live up to my expectations, but to be honest I don't know if that's because I remember SMA as being better than it really was ;)

That said, it was an enjoyable and quick read. Diana Holquist is a talented writer who knows how to grasp the attention of a reader, even if the plot itself is perhaps more than shallow. But if all you're looking for is a good romance, then this definitely fits the bill.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice reading. The lesson taught here is an advantage teaching on "the grass being greener on the other side". Yes there is a perfect match for each of us, but running through life looking for that match is a gamble. Making the individual you currently love (the magic word "LOVE") your one true love is the key. Know that you are in love with this individual; live as one; or be fair to both of you and walk away. Life lessons are tough sometimes, but they are ALWAYS true.

[C.P. Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great beginning to a equally good series. The basic idea (What would it really be like to know the name of your One True Love? Really? Even if the name turned out to be John Smith, and you were married to someone else?) is creative and thought-provoking, and the execution smart and funny. I usually don't go for contemporary romances, but I was happy to make an exception for this one.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strong writing and a "high concept" idea make for an amusing read, if not something that will resonant for long. The concept gets in the way of character development; readers may like these characters, but probably won't feel very strongly for them.

[Mary]

tries too hard to be whacky

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diana Holquist's novels are witty and utterly enjoyable!

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this book up because I liked the cover, bought it because of the inticing blurp. A funny light hearted read that had me quickly hooked and totally entertained. I'm sold on this author.

[Pamela(AllHoney) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book in the Make Me A Match series by Diana Holquist. It's somewhere between a 2 and 3 star. There were parts I really liked and parts that were just not up to par for me.

[Booklover, Indianapolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Nefret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guter Anfang, aber dann geht dem Buch die Puste aus.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book! Funny to! ♥

[rascalina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish reading it...

[LiLiana P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lovittttttt

[lucia · Rating 1 out of 5]

this would be usually be a 2 star book but the beginning (+ concept) was just SO GOOD i cant believe how disappointing everything else was GG

[Priyadharshni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very much...Too predictable and there is no real chemistry between cecelia and the hero..

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

great chicklit/rom, wrist-tingles, good!