by Sonya Lalli
This heartwarming and charming story about cultural identity and family connection is candid and funny but still manages to hit you in the feels.
Nani wishes Raina would spend less time working and more time dating to meet a husband. Raina wishes Nani would drop the incessant pestering about dating to meet a husband. Raina does her best to appease her grandmother and she desperately wants to make her proud. Still, when a huge misunderstanding causes Nani to drop the issue, Raina goes along with it and gets caught in a lie so deep the only way out is to claw, kick, and even ask for help.
I have to admit I have an automatic bias as this book takes place in Toronto. I never tire of reading about a setting I recognize. I can picture the streets, I know the neighbourhoods, and I hate(/ love) to say it but … I get the vibe.
The characters are what give this novel such soul. Raina is hard-working, driven, and witty. She’s open to love, she wants to find love; the problem is that she hasn’t fully come to terms with the end of her first love. Nani, meanwhile, is a character you can’t help but love. She is opinionated but so caring and while she holds on tight to some of her traditional ideas, she is quite progressive and resolute in her beliefs.
“… she’d sigh like the idea of something new tired her right out.”
The Matchmaker’s List, p. 34
The family dynamics represented were complicated. Raina lived with and was raised by her Nani. She doesn’t know her father and her mother is … erratic at best. As such, her Nani is her whole world. There is no one more important to her, no one she feels more loyal to. This makes it all the more painful to imagine how much Raina must be struggling to lie on such a big scale to her. It is difficult enough for her to be lying to people she cares about, but thinking about how deeply stressful Nani’s pressure must have been to push Raina to commit this last resort lie really elicits an empathy I didn’t anticipate. I initially shrugged this off as the stereotypically pushy mother figure trope but their closeness is such an integral part of their lives, they’re inextricably bound.
“Loved them more than I knew how to understand.”
The Matchmaker’s List, p. 124
I thought this was going to be a lighthearted book but it really got quite emotional when you try to put yourself in Raina’s shoes. I really enjoyed this balance between stirring moments and funnier ones. This story does include a few really bad first dates, after all, that rarely disappoints for a chuckle.
The lie Raina contritely goes along with could be seen as insensitive, I certainly think it’s a risky plot point for Lalli to have created however Raina’s innate kindness shows us her true intentions. The LGBTQ+ representation reinforces the strong moral foundation of this story and the main characters at their core. The lessons we come away with revolve around our judgement of others and acceptance—not being so set in our ways.
Raina is the kind of character that you want to be friends with. For me, that’s a sure indicator of a good story; if it wasn’t I wouldn’t have read enough to care about her, and I wouldn’t have invested in her outcome. This is a fun and unexpectedly emotional ride that I’d even love to read a sequel to! I really can’t wait to read the rest of this author’s backlist.
shelfie books 