The Unmatchable Bachelor

by Kelly Papyrus

Aarti makes a good living as Toronto's leading Indian matchmaker, despite her own bad luck in love. She's so good that people in the Desi community believe she can find the perfect soulmate for even the toughest, pickiest singles out there. That's why Mrs. Singh comes to her office, offering Aarti the biggest paycheck of her life if she can find the perfect match for her son, a man so determined not to marry that he’s gone viral as the unmatchable bachelor.

Aarti is sure she can match anyone, but Vijay Singh might have some secrets of his own that make his marriage impossible. Plus, there’s the small issue of his brother Amit, who doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that she’s older and divorced. Could Amit be Aarti’s own second chance at love?

Genres: Audiobook, Romance, LGBT, Contemporary Romance, Novella, Contemporary

ebook

Published December 15, 2020

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

4.5 stars rounded up

Unexpected in a great way! This romance novella didn't go in the direction I thought it would, but it's able to cover a lot of ground and important topics in not a lot of space. It follows a divorced Desi woman who works as a matchmaker in Toronto. She agrees to take on the titular "unmatchable bachelor" as a client, but the reason he's so hard to match has less to do with his pickiness and more to do with secrets he's keeping about being gay . Meanwhile there is chemistry between the matchmaker and his brother...

I found this to be delightful and a thoughtful exploration of how people fall in love and where that gets caught up in cultural norms.

[Geneviève (thefreckledbookworm)]

Entertaining, and does the job when you have to wait over a week for your Scribd titles to unlock 😅😂 2.5⭐

[Aiyana]

This book wasn't to focused on the actual "unwatchable bachelor" the tile is referring to. I love the representation in this book. Cute love story, but nothing to be obsessed with. Very lackluster ending.


3.5 Stars

[Rachel Bowdler]

So sweet and diverse! I’ve never read a romance centered around Indian culture before, and the fact it also had LGBT+ rep made it even better!

[Lizzie Belnap]

a really fun story ruined by bad writing lol

[anna ✩]

3.5 stars!

I listened to the audiobook of this and really recommend it. Very entertaining, cute story with heartfelt characters and some funny moments.

[Houneida Benmahidi]

Hate read this, would not recommend.

[Rae (Bookmark Chronicles)]

My thoughts are available on The StoryGraph

[Litsplaining]

This book is getting flack for the quick turn around of the parents.

When reading, though, I got the feeling that the mother's obvious love for her sons would make it believable that she's try to understand her son being gay and the other not wanting to marry his original fiancé something that would allow her to accept them easily. When you factor in her being a survivor of abuse and having fled India just to get away from her abuser, it made the story believable that her core principle is for her sons to be happy.

Give it a read and see if you agree.

[Nandini]

A light, pleasant read but extremely predictable. I enjoyed the premise of the book, the scene setting and the characters, but two things I could not get over were:

(spoilers)

1) How quickly both couples fell in love. I know that it was only an 118 page book, but there are still ways of getting two people to actually fall in love. With both Vijay and Raj and Aarti and Amit, one second they were attracted to eachother, the next they were in love and getting married and breaking every rule they had ever lived by?! It felt false, especially for a rom com when the whole plot revolves around the romance.
2) The ending. After all the build up around the Singhs and their insistence on getting their sons married...they were suddenly okay with it all? Again, felt false, rushed and unbelievable. We also do not know why Aarti's mum was suddenly in India. Things ended rather abruptly, and I could not reconcile how one short year later everything had worked out perfectly.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did - it did satisfy my criteria of being a short, light read but I do think the plot could do with some more development.

[Amby]

Interest plot and different from other romance audiobooks I've heard, but just was missing that little bit of spice.

[Debra Akins]

This was a cute novella that managed to be really fun while touching on serious topics. I wasn’t sure where it was going to go at first, but pleasantly surprised by how it ended.

[SnooRegrets]

I really enjoyed the look into the culture, but I just couldn‘t warm up to the writing style as well as the characters.I also just really dislike the situation the characters were in.

[Adelina Taneva]

3.5

This is going to be a very weird review since I have been listening to this audiobook on Scribd and it ended weirdly towards the end but the book wasn’t finished?? Then I went to see how much it would be to buy and I can’t find it on Amazon at all so I don’t know what’s up with this book.

Either way this was a short book about an Indian matchmaker who is trying to be modern and independent but at the same time there are certain traditions she has to obey by. The story is quite cliche and predictable but I enjoyed parts of it anyway.

It discusses divorce for an Indian woman, her chosen profession, domestic violence, being queer (gay), being an older woman. All of these things were nice to see when discussed with respect to the culture but also in support of people being happy and living their lives.

Of course I did not finish the book properly but it just felt very average and not too exciting at all.

[Moushmi Radhanpara]

Aarti is divorced herself, but makes a good living as Toronto's leading matchmaker. But things go a little off when Mrs. Singh appoints her in finding a match for her elder son Vijay, The Unmatchable Bachelor, the one who lives with a secret. It goes worse when she falls for Vijay's younger brother, Amit, who has been engaged since he was a child. Will she find Vijay the perfect match? Will she find love in Amit? These are the answers unravel as the plot proceeds.

I have to admit that it was a sweet plot but I was disappointed as it felt rushed. The characters had a lot to offer and the twists were good, however, I felt that it could have come out well had it been a little longer, and everything had been dealt with more cleanly. My ratings go only for the plot, because towards the end, as it all comes together, the story feels hardly believeable. What happens with the characters could have happened but not with this simplicity.

[AnnieReads]

This was a short one. Very low on the spicy scale. There was a bit of culture as it was a love story in the Desi community in Canada and India. So that was a rather nice change of pace. The MC is a matchmaker and is approached by a wealthy woman who promises twice her normal rate for matching her son and getting him to the alter. She reluctantly agrees only to have her assistant and the new client (both males) making out at the first meet-up. She agrees to find the client a woman who wants marriage for her own reasons but it will be one in name only and it seems to work. Until things begin to unravel. Meanwhile, MC falls in love with her client's engaged brother. So everyone is falling in love but always with the wrong person. Ultimately, happy-ish endings were had all around.

[Victoria M]

Despite the reviews, I found this story to be quite charming. I understand the predictability, but isn't that why people love halmart films, they are so predictable its a joke. So why can't we enjoy predictable feel good stories too? The characters were lovable and I'm glad for the "predictability" because I was going to be SO heartbroken if they DIDN'T get together. I'm very reading gory books recently and this was a great pick me up from dark and dismal! Being a quick and easy read was also a plus for me.

[Leena Aluru]

3.75🌟

I actually liked it. She's got some of her terminology wrong but she's got the pulse to our I didn't society and its dos and don'ts perfectly well . The book is very short for any kind of plot, character development, back story etc. Also it was extremely rushed towards the end. But all in all a commendable book on a society foreign to her. Its short and sweetand a very quick read.
Great for contests, readathons and read prompts.

Recommended :👍

[Shelves]

2 - 2.5 stars

This felt way more rushed than i expected. I know it's under 200 pages (3+hrs audio) but one minute they were just meeting, and the next they were kissing saying they were in love. (I listened to the audio btw). I think if there was just a little more before that point it would have been like a 3 star. Plus I think I was a little bored and not extremely invested in the characters.

But i plan on reading another from this author regardless of this not being a fav.

[Inyene]

I loved reading about another culture. As a first generation immigrant, I feel like we can all sympathize with one another lol I knew the plot twist from the jump but the main romance? There was a lot of promise just for it to kind of fall apart? The ending was flat and somewhat predictable; I guess I expected much more conflict. On one hand maybe it's nice that it didn't have that. The book didn't make me gush with longing but it was sweet!

[Sabrina]

I wanted to like this… I find the concept really interesting and like that fact that it was about Indian culture, which I have never read a romance related to that before. Appreciated the LGBTQ representation.
I really disliked how fast they were “in love” they didn’t even know each other and they are already in love…? Huh? Felt disconnected and didn’t care for any of the characters because we barely knew anything about them.
All I can say was that it was an easy book to get through…

[Dhrish]

2.5 stars

C/W: Arranged marriages

A quick read that would have benefited from being twice as long.

At face value, it does bring all the talking points you'd expect. However, it attempted to tell a full-length novel story in a novella, which leaves the reader feeling very unsatisfied although all the structural points of a romantic comedy were met.

[Maritza Valle]

OOF.

It's like someone took the most dramatic parts of a 350 page book and assembled them in a pamphlet. I'm not even going to do my usual full review because it was a short, not terrible book (i listened via scribd) but it was incredibly disappointing because all of the sweet or important things didn't have any impact given that they weren't properly set up.

[Jemina Linnama]

Quick read. The set-up was somewhat different and new, but in the end, everything went as predictably as to be expected in the genre. Another reviewer said this one is a good read while waiting for better books to be available on Scribd, and I couldn't agree more.

[Lorena]

2.5 rounding up.

This was a super quick audiobook for me. I felt that the timeline of the relationships and falling in love was too quick and not very believable. The ending brought the rating for me as after the build up of the story it seemed all too easily resolved.

[Renecia]

The narrator is excellent!!! I’d like to hear more of her work. This is my first book by this author. I liked it. I would have enjoyed it more if there was more of it! But I like the concept a lot! I liked that the author explored alternate life styles!

[Liz]

A cute story, but definitely very insta-lovey.

[Ida Wilcox]

Quick read

[tatiana]

Very cute! Some of the choices made by the characters don’t make sense, but i enjoyed the read.

[Pufflekitteh]

Listened to the audiobook on Scribd.