Catherine Walsh's THE MATCHMAKER

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Bookouture for the digital ARC of Catherine Walsh’s The Matchmaker. The book will be published on Tuesday, April 18!

Catherine Walsh’s Holiday Romance was my favorite holiday romance of 2022, so I was excited to dive into another of her novels. The Matchmaker is set in a small Irish village called Ennisbawn where Katie Collins has grown up, raised by her grandmother after her parents died in a car accident when she was five.

Ennisbawn isn’t a fancy place, but its place in the hearts of its inhabitants is large. Katie works in a pub run by Adam, who acted as a sort of father figure for her. Outside the pub, there’s a wishing well where her parents met. Katie still lives with her granny and spends her days with her two best friends whose lives also center around the pub.

Change is coming, though. A wealthy real estate developer has bought up large swaths of land in Ennisbawn and is building a luxurious hotel. Led by a team manager named Josh and his contractor, Callum Dempsey, the builders have disrupted Katie’s every day, starting each morning when she’s awakened by the sound of construction vehicles. Katie is filled with resentment . . . and with interest. Callum is incredibly handsome, and he doesn’t seem to be quite as committed to the destruction of Ennisbawn as his boss.

Still, all things considered, Katie doesn’t love the plan, but she’s resigned to it . . . until she discovers that—through a series of legal machinations—they’ll be knocking down her beloved pub to make way for even more hotel-centered building.

So, Katie sets out to do the only thing she can think to do: revive the traditional match-making festival, emphasizing the tradition and culture that will be wiped out by the hotelier’s plans, bringing positive media attention to the village and negative media attention to the company’s project.

The only problem? The festival has dwindled—like the town—over the years, so it’s more of a recreation than a revival. But Katie is (or may be?) up to the challenge.

Just like Holiday Romance, The Matchmaker shines because of its characters and because of the authentic way that Walsh builds their relationship. The premise of each of these novels may be just outside the bounds of reality, but the relationships develop without the normal false barriers and miscommunications that plague some romance novels. Katie is a refreshingly self-aware protagonist, and Callum is just great: sincere and down-to-earth in his developing feelings for Katie and for the town. I also absolutely loved the secondary characters—Katie’s friends and family—who bring such a richness to the novel. Catherine Walsh is an author whose backlist I must dive into soon!

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