Review: 4.5 Stars
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 21, 2014
Overall, Meeting His Match by Katee Robert was a great, fast read and everything I look for in a category contemporary romance. The story was well paced and fun, the hero was HOT and alpha enough to set my panties aflame, and the heroine was smart, funny, and believable (with one notable exception, which I’ll get to in a moment).***Spoiler alert warning: I will try to avoid spilling too much of the storyline here, but a bit is unavoidable. You have been warned. :) ***The story involves a classic opposites attract trope with a bit of fish-out-of-water thrown in for fun. The writing is clean and smooth and there were really no rough areas that threw me out of the story or caused me to stop reading. At a concise 202 pages (according to my I-Books app), I finished this book in two days. I could have finished it in one, but I had to go out of town and was forced to stop three or four chapters in. This would be a great beach read or short weekend summer romp if you’re vacationing or camping or at the lake.The hero, Caine McNeill, is a southern charmer whose favorite endearment is “darlin’”. What’s not to love about that??? His character arc takes us from isolated, business-focused loner to a man willing to open his heart and his life to the right woman—our heroine, of course.Addison St. Claire is a streetwise, smart, savvy New York matchmaker who is conned into helping Caine find a mate by her best friend, Regan, who happens to be married to Caine’s younger brother. Through working with Caine, and a bit of compromise on both their parts, she is able to move forward from a painful past and create a deep, lasting relationship with the hero.The author did a good job of avoiding most of the clichéd weak-heroine traits that drive me insane in some contemporary romances of the past. I enjoy reading about people who are doing okay on their own, but are missing a special person to share their success with. Both Caine and Addison are not perfect. They each have baggage that must be overcome before they are ready to have a real relationship with anyone, including each other. Following their journey to wholeness is part of the fun.One minor issue I had involved the ‘soul mate’ subplot for the heroine. This felt a bit off, considering the intricacy with which the rest of the plot was constructed. The author spent a lot of time creating a fully-fleshed, intelligent, relatable heroine, then had her unwilling to move forward in a relationship with Caine solely because of a story her grandmother told her as a child about ‘one person-one soul mate’. Sorry, but it didn’t ring true for me. The whole aspect seemed a bit nonsensical given the heroine’s rational, modern approach to everything in her life. If nothing else, I’d think Addison would keep Caine around for the physical aspects of their relationship and the fact they related well on other levels too. The heroine’s tragic first marriage happened early in her life and they spent precious little time together. For me, it would’ve felt more authentic for her to realize that perhaps her idolized former husband wasn’t as perfect as she remembered and have her then understand how truly special her connection with the hero really is. Still, as I mentioned, this was only a minor interruption in my suspense of disbelief and didn’t stop me from finishing what was otherwise a great book.Meeting His Match was a fast, fun read. Sexy, smart, and stylish, I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a sassy story with a heaping side of Happily Ever After.