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elizabethh724 's review for:
Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club
by Roselle Lim
I admit I renewed this book the maximum amount of times I was allowed from the library, not because I didn't want to read it but it came along for me when I picked it up this week on deadline. While initially a little slow, it picked up and I didn't want to put it down and finished last night.
Sophie Go is a matchmaker, a profession highly respected and regarded in her Chinese culture- except by her parents, particularly her mother. I have to add a trigger warning here because Sophie's mother wasn't just the actual worst, she was horribly gaslighting, hurtful, manipulative and abusive. And her dad unfortunately enabled his wife's behavior out of fear or compliance.
Despite her awful mother, Sophie is a lovely human. She has returned to Toronto after 3 years in Shanghai at matchmaker college. She has a beat friend Yanmei, who I absolutely loved. Sophie isn't fully accredited as a matchmaker because of an unfortunate situation that went bad, but wasn't her fault. Sophie has a few months to get clients to match and prove her skills to become accredited. When her mother undermines her efforts to gain clients and humiliates her, Sophie has to go outside the box.
Helping the senior residents of her new apartment building find love matches while determined to get her parents approval, Sophie bends over backwards to succeed and keep her independence. I loved these secondary characters (Ducks!) and Sophie's nicknames for them. There's also the possibility of a romance with Mr. Particular who hires her to find his match despite her mother's interference. It was wonderful to see Sophie's confidence grow and equally maddening to see her mother attempt to strip her of who she is, calling her broken and worthless. I understand the cultural expectations to respect and obey your elders, but her parents took advantage of her so many times. It was obvious they were setting her up to fail so she would have no choice but to move back home and work at a bank. The kind of sabotage no parent should take over their adult child. But everyone got a HEA even though there was a sad twist towards the end. Sophie may never resolve things with her parents but her found family was even better. 4/5☆
Sophie Go is a matchmaker, a profession highly respected and regarded in her Chinese culture- except by her parents, particularly her mother. I have to add a trigger warning here because Sophie's mother wasn't just the actual worst, she was horribly gaslighting, hurtful, manipulative and abusive. And her dad unfortunately enabled his wife's behavior out of fear or compliance.
Despite her awful mother, Sophie is a lovely human. She has returned to Toronto after 3 years in Shanghai at matchmaker college. She has a beat friend Yanmei, who I absolutely loved. Sophie isn't fully accredited as a matchmaker because of an unfortunate situation that went bad, but wasn't her fault. Sophie has a few months to get clients to match and prove her skills to become accredited. When her mother undermines her efforts to gain clients and humiliates her, Sophie has to go outside the box.
Helping the senior residents of her new apartment building find love matches while determined to get her parents approval, Sophie bends over backwards to succeed and keep her independence. I loved these secondary characters (Ducks!) and Sophie's nicknames for them. There's also the possibility of a romance with Mr. Particular who hires her to find his match despite her mother's interference. It was wonderful to see Sophie's confidence grow and equally maddening to see her mother attempt to strip her of who she is, calling her broken and worthless. I understand the cultural expectations to respect and obey your elders, but her parents took advantage of her so many times. It was obvious they were setting her up to fail so she would have no choice but to move back home and work at a bank. The kind of sabotage no parent should take over their adult child. But everyone got a HEA even though there was a sad twist towards the end. Sophie may never resolve things with her parents but her found family was even better. 4/5☆