Review: Ms. Match

Ms. Match by Jo Leigh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gwen Christopher is a normal woman, attractive, shapely, intelligent. Unfortunately the rest of her siblings are all ridiculously attractive (like they have all modelled for a time), so she has always been the Plain Jane of the family. She doesn't get them, and they don't get her. They also pity for being single.

Paul Bennett is a PR Rep in Los Angeles, almost as attractive as his movie star clients, he's lick, charming, and seen in all the best places. He has been actively courting Gwen's sister Autumn, who has been playing hard-to-get, wafting in from far-flung places, going out to dinner with Paul and teasing him before slipping from between his fingers, she likes the chase.

For reasons unknown, maybe just because she can, Autumn asks Paul to find a date for Gwen to a family party. When the friend he had earmarked has a sick mother at the last minute Paul steps into his place, naturally. However, far from being pathetically grateful that he has arrived to escort her to the party, Gwen is mortified; her siblings will immediately guess that Paul is an escort or a pity date and she doesn't need a date in the first place. Gwen accepts reluctantly and Paul fully intends to leave the party as early as he possibly can, until he finds that all of Gwen's siblings are just plain mean to her (as others have said, not sure why other than for the plot LOL). To counteract the meanness he decides to stick around and one thing leads to another.

The reason I liked this is because despite being a category romance (I assume 'Blaze' means steamy), it turned the 'She's All That' turning a plain girl into a beauty trope on its head. Gwen doesn't change her appearance one iota, it's Paul who realises that he is shallow, someone that Gwen has no interest in dating, which is a blow to his ego, but he realises that he has hundreds of acquaintances but no ride-or-die friends, unlike Gwen. The more time he spends with Gwen, the more he enjoys her company, their conversations, her humour and the more he realises that he isn't happy in his materialistic lifestyle.

Other people have commented (adversely) on the fact that Paul was pursuing Autumn while entering into a friendship with Gwen, I didn't have that problem. To me Paul viewed Gwen as only a friend, and when that changed he intended to tell Autumn, it just took him a long time to realise that he had nothing in common with Autumn because he was blinded by her looks.

Anyway, it was fun, it was charming, it gave me the warm fuzzies.

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