Unlikely Match by Fiona Riley

Unlikely Match by Fiona Riley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books in exchange for an honest review.

I had every intention in the world to complete this book before it popped up for sale. And everything looked like I’d succeed. I was at 67% and had five days left. And I just stopped. For reasons. The most important one being that, while it is true I could easily have ‘powered through’ the end of the book, the last few percentage points, and then slapped up some quick review, I didn’t actually want to do that. I didn’t want to power through. I wanted to give this book a better chance to succeed with me. So I put it on pause. Still fully intending to complete the book before the 20th of June. So, here I am, the 24th of July and . . . well, I’ve finally restarted the book. And completed the last 33% in a few hours.

There were elements of the first book in the series that I enjoyed. Still, I didn’t like the book as much as I thought I would have, or as much as others did. So I had figured that it’d be a while before I tried another book by this author – I don’t stop reading after just one book. But then I spotted that this book here, and now I’m talking about ‘Unlikely Match’ not ‘Miss Match’, starred one of the characters who I thought was interesting in the first book, Shelly (plus another character from that book who hadn’t really made a massive impression on me – Claire). So I decided to go ahead and leap into another book by this author. Despite my somewhat tepid response to the first book.

Some of the problems that I had from the first book continued into the second. Namely the part where I still, no known reason why, had a massive amount of trouble keeping Lucinda and Samantha separate in my mind. Figuring out which was which. They just kind of merged in my mind. And quite frankly, they were kind of evil in this book, well Samantha was. In the old men from ‘Trading Places’ kind of evil. The ones who, as kind of a lark, manipulated two men into trading places for just a bet. I think the bet was for just a quarter at that. Why do I say that? Well, that’s what happened here, in a way – Samantha manipulated things to ‘force’ two people together who she thought would make a perfect match, despite how one of them never asked her to do so, and thought match making was stupid (or something like that) – and then that manipulation kind of continued, here or there, nudges, pokes, etc. And not just by Samantha. Shelly kind of got into that as well, maybe by accident. Like when Claire had come by to say that they can’t keep seeing each other because Shelly was Claire’s business client – and that got pushed aside by Shelly’s need to be close to Claire and hump her. But let’s move on from that.

I liked, for the most part, both Shelly and Claire in this book. They had some great scenes and dialogue, cute, sweet, humorous, touching. They also had some vaguely gross scenes, but that’s probably just me. I mean, maybe it’s just me that finds it kinda gross that someone would masturbate while thinking about the other woman and then – without in any way cleaning her hands, using that same hand that hand just been playing with herself, manipulating herself, gotten all slick and wet . . . that same uncleaned hand was then used to . . . . pet the cat. You know how cats keep themselves clean? By running their tongue over their body. I’m becoming vaguely nauseated as I’m mention this issue. So, I can’t continue. Please draw the correct conclusions as to what would happen next after basically wiping your pussy juices all over your furry cat who keeps themselves clean by use of their tongue.

Right, sorry. I had meant that paragraph to go ‘For the most part, I liked the two main characters in this book, Shelly and Claire, and, again for the most part, enjoyed their story. The thing that caused me to take a break for a month? Lucinda and Samantha. Why did they have to be in this book? They ruined things for me. I didn’t want to ‘break away from the action’ to go and visit them, who seemed to spend most of their time being lovey-dovey and dancing while planning a . . . big event (is that event a spoiler? I forget now, so I be vague).’

So: 1) liked Shelly and Claire; 2) liked Hedy the squeaking purring fur-ball cat; 3) there was sex, it was graphic, and occasionally it was gross (see my comment regarding cat earlier). AND 4) it did actually help me like this book more by giving myself time to pause and then restart. Maybe I didn’t really need a month pause, maybe I did.

Last thought: so the third book in this series involves the firefighter, Sasha, who has appeared, briefly, in this book here (and might have appeared in the first book). Hmm. She was kind of described as being strong and butchy looking. Why is the woman holding the fire-extinguisher on the cover wearing a tiny red dress and wearing high-heels? Right, sorry, I’m probably wrong in my recollections, and/or that’s supposed to be Abby holding Sasha’s fire-extinguisher. Oh, right, was going to say: I’m less excited about reading Sasha’s story.

Rating: 3.75 (which is an almost full star increase from my rating for the first book in the series)

July 24 2017




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