Loved this book! A touching story about family connections, traditions and love. I never wanted it to end!!

"I see what I see. I know what I know."
I read this book every chance I got in the last day and a half. It is very interesting and has a magnetic flow to it. Dual timelines are not my favorite but here is an author that has held my attention with both characters and their stories. Sara is wonderful right from the start. Her gift makes sense and as a reader I was immediately drawn to her and the challenges she had right from the start. Women have had to work harder and smarter and her unique journey proves that. I love the sayings she develops over the years as her character matures from the ten-year-old to her twenties and on into her nineties. She becomes a wise woman who tries to leave a legacy of a different sort to her granddaughter, Abby.
Life isn't easy and Abby learns this at a young age. Watching her parents builds determination in her mind to help others as she will become a lawyer. Her grandmother's passing begins to open her eyes to others and to memories that she needs to reevaluate.
I learned about the traditional Jewish matchmaker and the challenges if a female tried to make her way as one in the early 1900's. It's all kind of fascinating. The touch upon matchmaking in the late 1940's nearly brought me to tears at the thought of how important it was to find survivors to meet and move forward with life. The author researched some very interesting sources to create a fictional read that has a true feel to it.
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for my advanced reader's copy of the book. I recommend it to those who enjoy historical fiction and stories with a feel of family and tradition. This is my own unsolicited opinion.

Set in two different timelines The Matchmaker's Gift is the story of Sara, a matchaker and Abby, her granddaughter who is a divorce lawyer. When Abby loses Sara, she starts unraveling her grandmother's life and in turn realizes her direction as well.
On the surface, The Matchmaker's Gift is a heartwarming story of a granddaughter and a grandmother. It's a very well written story with a good pace and delightful novel of matchmaking in the Jewish community. I was really fascinated to read on how the process worked. My marriage was a result of subtle or not so subtle matchmaking as well and I was really intrigued.
On the deeper level, this book looks at the centuries old traditions where men make rules and women are expected to follow. As a trauma coach, I can see the trauma that unmarried women were subjected to by declaring them ineligible. The trauma that Sara's family went through when they immigrated to a new country comes across very clear. Her guilt of studying while her family is making ends meet is hard to read. Abby's decision of becoming a divorce lawyer and the trauma that she suffered during childhood is very interconnected. It is satisfying to see her journey pan out at the end when with the help of her grandmother she starts healing.

A touch of magical realism sparkles in this lovely, heartfelt novel. At age 10, Sara made her first match finding a young man with a hankie on the boat to America and seeing a ray of light between him and her sister. While the match was a resounding success, her next one led to jealousy and harassment from the professional match makers who were all men and matching on the basis of money and status. As we learn her story, it is balanced with that of her granddaughter, Abby, a divorce attorney. Both Sara and Abby are fully realized characters that you will care about. I know this is one book I will remember.

This book will be sitting with me for quite some time. I really enjoyed the descriptive settings where I felt I was there in the past with Sara. I enjoyed the dual povs in different timelines between Sara & her granddaughter Abby.

Sara Glikman is traveling to America with her family. She notices a strange light connecting her sister with another passenger. They meet and fall in love. Sara realizes she has a gift. Her father asks that she not help anyone with her matchmaking gift. In the Jewish faith, only married men do matchmaking as a career known as a shadchanim. The shadchanim will be angry.

Abby, her granddaughter is a divorce attorney who just started working in a law firm. She's determined to be a partner. When her grandmother passes away and leaves a box of old journals for Abby. Abby starts to read the journals and learns more about her grandmother and in turn learns more about herself.

I loved Moishe Raskin he was the sweetest man and I really wanted to reach into the book and just hug him. Sara had a bunch of great men who protected her.

This book was fantastic and I learned more about the Jewish religion and the matchmaking services. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for more of the authors' books. I'm a fan.

What would you do if you could learn or gain an understanding of yourr Grandparent after they were gone? For Abby that is exactly what happened. Her grandmother, Sara, died in her sleep one night. Suddenly Abby is left with her notebooks from her life as a matchmaker.

This book was so captivating. Both of the timelines, Sara’s and Abby’s, were so interesting that I needed to keep reading to figure out what happened.

The epilogue was the most beautiful ending that could have been given to this story without over sharing. I would highly recommend reading this book. It was too good to miss.

First of all, isn't this cover just amazing!? I absolutely love it!

I had not read any of Ms. Loigman's books before this one, although I do have one on by TBR shelf. This story has given me a taste of her beautiful and heartfelt writing so I'm excited to take that book off of the shelf and dive into it.

The Matchmaker's Gift is dramatic, while at the same time, magical and full of love. And I adored every second of it. The story takes place in two different time periods, covering the life of Sara who discovered her matchmaking abilities at a very young age and Abby, her granddaughter, who seems to have inherited the matchmaking gift but is struggling to understand it.

The two stories are intricately woven together as we learn how both women suffered and fought for the lives they wanted. Both were amazing women. I absolutely loved this story and will be recommending The Matchmaker's Gift to all.

I listened to this lovely story on Audible. Absolutely one of my favorite listens of 2022! This story is so authentic with the love between grandmother and granddaughter! I love how the old ways and gifts can be carried into the future. Lynda Cohen Loigman has a marvelous gift for writing historical fiction. Her books make great audio books and I have them all on audio.

This is such a charming, wonderful story.. I loved every minute of reading it. The characters are well developed and unique. The dual timeline was very interesting. The book was also very well researched and I enjoyed learning about NYC Jewish culture in the early 20th century. I also really appreciated the touch of magical realism. Do yourself a favor and read this charming feel-good book today.

The Matchmaker's Gift is such a quirky hybrid of so many different genres and topics: period drama, domestic fiction, historical fiction, Judaism and the Holocaust, grief and loss, the supernatural, and romance just to name a few. Lynda Cohen Loigman has done an amazingly cohesive job of alternating chapters, generations and narrators between the story of 20th century grandmother Sara Auerbach nee Glikman, and that of her 21st century granddaughter Abby, a young divorce attorney discovering a surprisingly rare talent that the two of them share. Sara's story begins with her matchmaking career, at the age of 10 as her family voyages away from the perils of WWII to America, and Abby's story takes place in NYC in 1994 involving high net worth clientele and rom-commy highjinks. I loved Abby and Sara's sweet relationship, and the timeless advice and words of wisdom sprinkled throughout this beguiling story, often both in Yiddish and English:

A trope live brengt a mol a yam trein
A drop of love sometimes brings an ocean of tears

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐆𝐢𝐟𝐭 has a little something of everything: historical fiction, Jewish representation, strong women, magical realism, and of course romance.

Sara, in 1910, knew from the age of ten that she had the gift of making matches. She must fight to earn the respect and right to work as a matchmaker in her community. Going against tradition and standing up against devout old men, Sara will change the course for many.

Abby, Sara’s granddaughter, in 1994, is working as a successful divorce attorney in Manhattan. When Sara passes, Abby inherits Sara’s journals that list all her matches. Abby begins to realize she may have the gift as well, and it begins to cause chaos in her life. But the further she digs into Sara’s journals, the more wonders she finds, and the more she realizes what she wants for her life as well.


I loved these characters! Lynda Cohen Loigman is a wonderful storyteller; she balanced humor with grief and romance with the magical matchmaking just right. I look forward to reading more from her soon.

Thank you @stmartinspress for this beautiful copy and @macmillan.audio for the gifted audiobook.



🥒 𝐒𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠’𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫.” 𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐬? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐧?

5/5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for the Arc! I absolutely adored this book. The storyline switches between Abby, a divorce attorney, and her grandmother( younger years). Abby’s grandmother, Sara has a special ability to match soulmates. Will Abby inherit it as well? The story alternates between Abby and Sara in the past. One of my favorite books this year.

In the modern day, Abby is a divorce lawyer. And she's very good at it. Until, with the death of her beloved grandmother Sara, she realises that maybe her true calling is uniting people, not divorcing them.

In the past, Sara has just moved to New York and discovers that she has a natural gift for matchmaking. As a young, unmarried female, Sara is prohibited from becoming a professional matchmaker: this is reserved for shadchanims (Jewish matchmakers).

I'm a big fan of dual timelines, especially when they overlap and mirror each other as well as this one does. It is such a warm comfort read and each of the story arcs complements the other so well.

I really enjoyed reading about the Jewish traditions of matchmaking - I found it really interesting. Reading about Sara's natural ability to identify soul-mates was very charming as opposed to the more practical and theoretical means of matchmaking that were popular at the time.

I also liked the way this multi - generational story fitted together and we saw how life unfolded for both Abby in the present day, and for Sara as a young girl. Seeing how these women each came to terms with their gift across the generations was very intriguing.

All in all, an easy to read, comforting book that explores love in all its forms. Thank you to the publisher, the author, Netgalley and the blog tour organisers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant and always captivating, this novel easily became one of my favorites of the year.

Told from two perspectives, readers will first fall in love with Sara Glikman, an old-country firecracker fighting to forge her reputation as a matchmaker on New York’s Lower East Side. The historical 1920s setting leaps off the page with the charming rabble of millions of Jewish strivers.

No need to bat around “Fiddler” callbacks though. Soon we meet Abby, a thoroughly burnt out modern go-getter of her own time and place. Grandma Sara’s gifts were for the matching of soulmates: Abby is a divorce lawyer.

That type of laugh out loud juxtaposition alone was enough to hook me into this truly original novel of strong women, strong family ties and an indelible sense of cultural history.

When she discovers her late Bubbe’s old matchmaking ephemera, a window facing a new direction opens for Abby. Might something more than litigation lay in her DNA?

Though Sara has passed on the lessons of her life are only just beginning, and they are a joy to learn.

3.5 light fun stars, rounded up to 4
The Matchmaker’s Gift is a historical fiction romance. Of the two timelines, I liked the older Jewish one better, where the grandmother, Sara, just immigrated to New York City and ran into problems with Orthodox male Jewish matchmakers. The modern character, Abby, was more artificial as a divorce lawyer with a stereotypical mean boss. As with most romances, the plot line is a bit predictable, but the characters are interesting and the writing and plot development solid. The author did her research. She cites matchmaking articles from old editions of The New York Times in her acknowledgements.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“The heart is big enough to hold both grief and love.”

I read Loigman’s debut novel, The Two-Family House, followed by The Wartime Sisters, and I loved them both, so when Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press invited me to read and review The Matchmaker’s Gift, I leapt. Once again, Loigman has me at hello. This outstanding historical novel is for sale now, and you should get it and read it.

The story is told from the point of view of two protagonists, a woman and her grandmother; they were close, but Sara the grandmother has died, so her story is told in the past, beginning in 1910, when she arrives in the U.S. as a child, along with her family. Abby is her granddaughter; her story begins in 1994. Their stories are told alternately, but both are in the third person omniscient and told in a linear time frame, so I am free to lean back, relax, and get lost in their stories, without any confusion or doubling back to check things.

Sara was a matchmaker, although she initially had to be very careful, because Jewish tradition dictated that matchmakers be married men, and she was still just a girl. But she was gifted with visions of a sort, and could tell who belonged together. And so she was forced to create matches “in secret, pairing people together like a rogue puppeteer.” She never missed. And upon her passing, she leaves a cryptic message indicating that upon her death, Abby will inherit her special talent.

Abby is nonplussed by this, and even as she grieves her beloved grandmother’s death, she is confused as to what she should do. She’s a divorce lawyer, for heaven’s sake! Is she to toss her education and become a modern day yenta? She hasn’t even found a man for herself yet, let alone for others.

It’s always a joy to find a story that diverges from the well-worn path, and novels involving Jewish matchmakers—or any others, for that matter—are thin on the ground. But that is only a small part of this novel’s appeal. I love Sara and Abby; I almost feel they are my friends. I feel their sorrows and admire their courage and integrity. When either of them meets with unfair opposition, I want to smack their detractor with my cane.

But there’s something extra that’s infused into Loigman’s stories, an intangible but unmissable warmth. Nobody can teach anyone this. I can count on one hand the number of authors that can write heartwarming stories that don’t follow formulas or insult the reader’s intelligence. Loigman is one, and this makes her golden.

When I was halfway finished reading this glorious novel, I saw that an audio galley was available. I was a bit cautious, because I had already developed a firm sense of how these women sounded in my head, and I was afraid I might not like the narrators’ interpretations, but my concern was unfounded. I had a road trip ahead of me, and I listened to the next forty percent as I drove, and there wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t love. Narrators Eva Kaminsky and Gabra Zackman do a lovely job, and I have never had such a seamless transition from the digital galley, to the audio, and back again.

Highly recommended, and bound to be one of the year’s best loved books.

A wonderful story about a grandmother and granddaughter who share an insight. Told in split time limes at both the beginning and at the end of the 20th century, it’s all about matchmaking.
I’ve read many books about Jewish culture and was delighted to dive into the matchmaking world.
Abby and Sara were mesmerizing characters. I loved the early 20th century time frame the best. Abby’s comment about match.com made me chortle.
We all want to find that special someone and reading this book was truly a gift.

This is a beautiful story about love, struggles and family. There are two narrators in this book. Sara, who has emigrated to the US with her family after WWII and her granddaughter Addy, a successful divorce attorney. We begin with Sara at age 10. She finds a husband for her sister on the ship. Everyone is amazed, but they don’t know about her talent for finding true love matches is an unusual way. Fearing trouble, her family hides her talent. It happens several times during the next few years, all hidden and no one knows that she is making matches. It is unheard of during that time for a young unmarried woman to be doing this. The local male matchmakers are very suspicious of her, but they cannot prove anything. Fast forward to Addy’s story. She is mourning the death of her grandmother. She doesn’t believe in marriage and was attracted to her career because of the way her father treated her mother when they divorced. She has good instincts for people and can’t resist helping them. This does not go over well with her boss. Will Addy follow her instincts or keep on the path her boss has set for her? A delightful read!

Also reviewed at B&N under 1IrishEyes430 and Kobo under IrishEyes430

What a lovely surprise this book was!! Immediately, I was immersed in this story and enjoyed the entire ride. You know the feeling you get when you start a book and think, “Oh, I’m going to love this??” It’s exactly what happened to me! This is told in dual timelines, which made me nervous. Fortunately, this one had me invested in both timelines, and I enjoyed them both! I have to admit, I did love Sara’s timeline a little bit more. Jewish match-making? Yes, let’s get into it!! I was so intrigued by it all when I was watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (great show)!

Speaking of Sara, she was such an amazing character. Sara’s timeline is in the past- 1910. She’s Abby’s grandmother and we get to learn about her path from a child. She’s got a gift to recognize soulmates and starts matchmaking. Her family is threatened by those that make matches for a living. She starts to do so in secret for years. We get to learn about those matches and her own life. It was such a beautiful story and I was quickly obsessed with Sara and her quick wit.

Many things in Sara’s past were heartbreaking. I was crying for a character I didn’t even know well. The writing in this book is just beautiful and captivating. It was really hard to put down. You keep turning the pages because you need to know what happens. You are rooting for Sara so hard from beginning to end.

Abby is the current timeline in 1994. She’s struggling after her grandmother has just passed away. We get to learn more about their bond with flashbacks of Abby’s past. She’s also had a tough life but she’s made a great life for herself, or so she thought. She starts to learn more about her grandmother’s past and starts to unravel her own life. Abby starts to realize that maybe the great life she’s living isn’t so great after all. She’s lonely and her boss is terrible. I loved her journey from the beginning to the end.

I loved seeing the flashbacks of Abby and Sara. They had such a beautiful relationship that will warm your heart. A grandmother dropping her life in Florida to come to be with her daughter and granddaughters, she’s a gem. I had a really close relationship with my grandpa, who also lived in Florida. It brought back a lot of sweet memories.

I did think some things tie up a little too pretty. It’s okay though because this is fiction and it’s what makes such an emotional story feel so good. There are heartbreaking and intense moments but this story left me with such a smile on my face. It was magical and light heartened in the end.

Overall, I loved this book! I highly recommend this book if you are looking for an immersive story that won’t let you go. I am still thinking about it today! I had such a hard time writing this review because I don’t know if I can correctly express myself. I’m saying this- read this book!! It’s beautiful, full of love and light!

Many thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an e-arc to review.

“There’s a lid for every pot.”

Jewish Historical fiction isn’t my go to when I read for fun. Far too many are holocaust based and with my family’s history it’s too painful. However when this book was available on NetGalley with Jewish representation and a spark of the divine or magic I was drawn in.

I LOVED this book. The people felt so real to me. I enjoyed the dual timelines showing me religious old world Jewish immigrants and present day Reform Judaism. The book does a great job breaking down the whys of certain jewish practices, I hadn’t known the why for a couple, it was just a comforting learned behavior. The characters were warm and given depth by allowing us to see their insecurities. I have so many notes saying oh, my Jewish camp friends will like this, wow this reminds me of the high holidays or my traditions growing up. Thank you to Lynda for giving me the comfort of a Jewish book that sparks joy. This book is out now so you could wrap yourself in its comfort by Rosh Hashanah. Thank you to St. Martins Press & NetGalley for the gifted copies. My review is an honest account of how I feel about the book.