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Susan Elizabeth Phillips easily rates as one of my top three favorite romance authors. I mourned the ending of her Chicago Stars/Bonner Brothers series in 2001, and was therefore delighted to discover that Match Me If You Can not only provides us with a fascinating new twosome, but also features one of my all time favorite couples, Phoebe and Dan Calebow from It Had To Be You, as significant secondary characters, as well as Molly and Kevin Tucker from This Heart of Mine.
Given that Annabelle Granger can claim a variety of failed careers at the age of 31, she is more than determined to make the most of her latest opportunity. Her grandmother has just bequeathed Matches by Myrna, her struggling matchmaking business, to Annabelle, complete with an old computer and outdated client list. Changing the name to Perfect for You, Annabelle sees herself as a marriage facilitator rather than a matchmaker and hopes her highly competitive family will finally leave her alone once she succeeds. She lives in her grandmother’s old home, drives her grandmother’s old car, and largely deals with her grandmother’s old clients. But Annabelle has a plan – land a well-known, highly desirable male client, find him a wife, and just watch her business take off!
Heath Champion, owner of a leading sports management firm, has fought his way to the top one client at a time. A blue collar kid from a bad home, Heath attended college on a football scholarship, earned a law degree from Harvard, and then quickly established himself as one of the best sport agents in the country. Part of his plan for success includes marrying his ideal woman by the age of 35, but Heath decides that he is just too busy to contribute the time and effort necessary to find her. His wife would be the ultimate symbol of his accomplishments – the calm in his storm. She should be somewhere between 22 and thirty, polished, beautiful, sweet, domestic, athletic, brilliant, socially connected, submissive, and of course, hot. He decides to treat his search for a wife as he would any other part of his business by hiring Power Matches, the best matchmaking agency in Chicago that specializes in finding trophy wives for powerful, discriminating men who can’t find the time to do it themselves and are rich enough to pay their exorbitant fees.
Heath represents Kevin Tucker, the starting quarterback for the Chicago Stars, and, in an attempt to placate his wife Molly, agrees to meet with her good friend Annabelle concerning his search for a wife. Heath has no intention of using Annabelle’s matchmaking services since he’s already signed with Power Matches and has no time to waste with his age deadline less than a year away. However, Annabelle is convinced that a match for Heath will make her reputation and refuses to take no for an answer. Heath can hardly believe he is allowing this badly dressed owner of such a screwball operation to strong-arm him into an introduction, but he reasons that Annabelle’s desperate earnestness deserves some reward and challenges her to bring her best candidate to meet him the following night for a twenty minute introduction. Both characters strongly captured my attention in this humorous opening scene – Annabelle is lovable as the queen of mishaps and Heath is the perfect picture of a commanding, sexy hero.
Much to Heath’s amazement, he is quite taken with Annabelle’s first candidate and finds himself signing yet another matchmaking contract even though he doesn’t have all that much confidence in Annabelle continuing to deliver such outstanding introductions. Still, two agencies providing prospective mates might prove advantageous.
Annabelle is a witty, captivating, and slightly eccentric character who now rates as my favorite heroine for 2005. I found myself thoroughly enjoying her candidness and her thought processes, which were sometimes downright hilarious. And Heath…he is just so darn sexy I discovered myself rereading many of his scenes. He definitely has a dominant personality, along with a penchant for bossiness, but he possesses enough positive traits to make him a well balanced character. He is quite manipulative to the point of aggravation at times, but his comeuppance is served in both small and large doses as needed. I found his training regimen for marital fidelity to be both funny and refreshingly unique for this type of hero.
Besides the secondary characters from previous books, Phillips serves up some new ones to savor. Portia Powers is an exceptional example – I cannot remember another quite like her and she won’t be easily forgotten. Bodie Gray, Heath’s chauffeur and close friend, brings upheaval into Portia’s life with his rough and demanding nature. Dean Robillard, the cocky Chicago Stars quarterback destined to take Kevin Tucker’s place upon retirement, looks to have definite hero potential. And Hannah, Sophie and Dan’s daughter, seems to have a story out there somewhere as well.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips delivers a dynamite book with Match Me If You Can. Her multidimensional characters deliver page after page of sparkling dialogue, laughs, and a few tears. Heath and Annabelle’s relationship evolves on many levels and generates a good bit of heat as well. The rigid plan each has developed for their success in life ultimately becomes their greatest struggle. It has been quite a while since I have found this much reading enjoyment packed into one book. It fits my definition of great contemporary romance in more ways than one.
Grade: A
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/08/05
Publication Date: 2005
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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I loved this review. You’ve written it very well I love SEP books. They are funny and entertaining.
This is the only SEP book I still like and reread. I adore Annabelle even though SEP does her usual humiliate heroine thing. I felt like she at least held her own and this book makes me laugh. I’m also quite fond of matchmaker plots.
This is my niece’s favorite of SEP’s books for the reasons you just listed, Amanda.
This book has always been one that I really wanted to like more than I did, and I’ve always been a bit irritated that it didn’t work that well for me because on the surface it really could have been wonderful. Too much humiliation of the heroine was a big factor in not enjoying it more, and since time has passed I’ve been introduced to many more romance authors who just write more respectful relationships between the main couple. I also did not find that Heath appreciated Annabelle until far too late in the novel where, by that point, it didn’t feel persuasive. On the other hand, the secondary relationship between the older couple was so lovely and felt like an entirely different book.
SEP has been accused of being really hard on her heroines like they need to work to deserve the men.
Having said that, I enjoyed this book very much.
Well, that must work for many because she’s one of the biggest sellers in the genre and in general.
She sure is!
And speaking personally, she’s lovely and warm in person. It made me more inclined to read her books.
She is. I also think her heroes are men to be conquered and she likes to show that women with real flaws can indeed conquer those proud souls.
Yes, in SEP books women typically bear the burden of working for the relationship, or at least for the first 3/4 of the novel. Then after much abuse, the men have to work to get the woman back. It’s definitely a formula in many of her novels. I think some readers enjoy the groveling from the men, and in lots of cases it is actually very emotional. Aside from that formula though, in Match Me If You Can, I didn’t ever feel as if Heath was madly in love with Annabelle and in many SEP books, I do feel as if the hero has fallen in love despite his wishes. But, I have friends who love this book and so they must feel something different from it.
The secondary romance in this is, like it is in many of SEP’s books, worth the price of the novel. I love Portia and Body and how SEP makes us see how routinely our superficial impressions of others cause us to miss out on truly superb people.
When I did a post for our blog on all-time great secondary romances, Portia and Brodie immediately came to mind. When I reread this book, I actually skip the Annabelle chapters altogether and read it like a Portia novella.
https://allaboutromance.com/secondary-romances-and-risk-taking/
Works for me!
I’m with you Dabney – I love SEP’s secondary characters/romances. They are some of the very few “mature” couples we get to read in romances.