I loved this book so much!! It's set in Ireland, enemy to lovers Rom-com.
I was literally laughing out loud throughout the book! I loved almost every single character.
I'd highly recommend this book!! It's released April 18th and available for preorder now ✨
I'm off now to go buy more of @catwalshwriter books

THIS WAS SO STINKING CUTEEEE

she was a tad insta lovey but we’re not gonna talk about that because the friendships and side characters were the most perfect, swoon-worthy i’ve ever read about

it had the heart and the small town vibes that really pulled this story together and i can’t recommend it enough

I'm a sucker for RomComs.

After reading a few heavy books I needed something that wasn't horrendously dark and this was perfect!

Katie, who lives in a sleepy village gets woken up at 7am, again, by construction trucks and in her sleep deprived state marches onto the building site to find the Foreman to complain. She finds Callum.

What ensues is your typical rom com enemies to lovers trope but I ADORE that particular trope!

Katie is smart and witty and I loved her as the protagonist. Her love of her small village and it's inhabitants felt so real it was hard not to fall in love with small village life.

I stayed up way past my bedroom to read this and I wasn't disappointed. It was a delicious tonic to fall into.

Catherine Walsh does it again!! She is becoming my go-to romance author and I just know that every book she comes out with is going to be another hit. wow. I adored this book and getting to know Katie and her love for her hometown was wonderful!

Anyone who knows me, knows my literary kink is reading Irish novels about The Troubles. Well step aside Irish Troubles novels, I've got a new kink: riotously funny rom-coms set in small Irish villages on the verge of extinction.

The Matchmaker by Catherine Walsh is set in the tiny Irish village of Ennisbawn. Katie Collins, a plucky orphan and bartender, has barely left her village and has no desire to any time soon. But her quiet village is soon interrupted by construction on a massive hotel and golf resort going up on the former church and convent grounds.

Katie butts head with the on-site coordinator Callum Dempsey, but even in her rage she can appreciate the kind of man he is (aka hot af). And it's not really Callum she's angry at; instead, it's his boss Jack Doyle, who isn't satisfied just razing the former church grounds; he wants to tear down Kelly's Pub - Katie's workplace, the last remaining pub in town, and most crucially, the place Katie's late parents met and fell in love.

Those are the bones of the story - Katie figures out that making a case for the historical significance of Kelly's may be the only way to save it, so she decides to relaunch the once famed Ennisbawn Matchmaking Festival. With the help of her two very best friends - Gemma, a single mother with a cranky 12 year old and Anushka, a hair stylist and love addict - along with her reluctant boss Adam, Katie works to revive the festival and save her town.

I read a lot of romcoms - I enjoy the genre, and I like books that make me feel happy. My biggest issue with romcoms in general is that the vast majority are heavy on the rom and light on the com. That's not the case here - I quite literally laughed out loud time and time again. Katie and Callum have honest-to-god chemistry that leaps off the page, and the irreverent Irish brand of humor shines through. I also loved all the side characters - Gemma & Adam could have their own sequel, which I would happily read. Five stars, would recommend to anyone wanting a laugh and some love in their life.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC.

Where do I begin?

The Matchmaker by Catherine Walsh was EXACTLY what I needed. I genuinely love Katie as a character. She’s awkward and never thinks before she speaks and I felt like I could connect with her so much. She puts her all into everything she does and is willing to move Heaven and earth for her family and community. I could feel Katie and Callum’s chemistry from their first meeting. They had me giggling and laughing with their banter and I fell in love with them. I loved the plot and how we not only got Katie and Callum’s story but also other members of the community! I really enjoyed this story and will definitely be reading more by Catherine Walsh!!

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Okay, this was pretty adorable and had some hilarious moments!
However if you don't like insta-love, I'd probably sit this one out
The whole small town vibes, the side characters with their own love stories completed this book perfectly, and I was definitely swooning over a few moments 👀
My only issue was it seemed there were storylines added and then never completed, like it was added just to make it longer. For instance Katie saying she was single and was planning to join in on the matchmaking, it didn't make sense and added no impact to the storyline.
Overall, very enjoyable with loveable characters and a sweet town I wish I could visit 🩷
Thankyou Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC

After absolutely loving Holiday Romance by Walsh last year, I will happily read whatever she writes! Her characters are endearing, the story concepts are interesting, and the books are absolutely full of humor.

Katie is a small town girl, having lived in a small Irish town called Ennisbawn with her Granny her whole life. She loves her town, her friends and neighbors, and her job at the local bar and is content to keep things the same forever. When a large construction company purchases acres upon acres of land in the town and begins to tear down trees to build a golf resort, the town decides to fight back. Katie has the idea to bring back the Matchmaking Festival their town once held, and the books centers on the town trying to raise money and host the festival. When Katie storms down to the construction site one morning after being woken by all the noise, she meets Callum, and you can immediately tell he will be important to the story.

The chemistry between Katie and Callum is obvious, and I enjoyed all of their interactions. His interest in Katie is pretty much instant, as he is attracted to her fiery personality and the love she has for her town. Katie stays firm in telling Callum she is happy right where she is, and I loved that about her. She is a character who knows what makes her happy and doesn’t feel the need to move to a big city just because everyone else expects her to.

The greater story is one about community, about working together, about friendship. The townspeople are entertaining characters, especially Granny, who is a pretty hilarious Granny. Their town sounds idyllic and felt like another character in the story, setting a beautiful atmosphere. Different scenarios and conversations in the book made me laugh out loud several times, and I had fun reading this one!

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I think I was living under a rock because Catherine Walsh's books are amazing. I only wish I had found her books sooner because not only I loved this, I went and read 'One Night Only' and am currently breezing through 'The Rebound' and both of them are so so good.

Coming back to The Matchmaker, the setting and the plot was beautiful. The classic small-town girl saves the said small town from the big corporate honchos but finds herself along the way is done in a gripping manner and I couldn't keep the book down. Katie, Callum and Granny were absolute delights to read about. The supporting characters had depth too especially Gemma and Adam. I was happy when they got together (it was a long-time coming).

A perfect weekend read with a beautiful Irish countryside setting and characters that make you swoon. I don't know if this is in pipeline but I would definitely love to read Jack Doyle's story too and see him falling in love.

I enjoy reading Catherine Walsh's sweet romance novels, so I was excited to see that she has a new book out! In Walsh's newest book, Katie is desperately trying to save her tiny Irish village from the big city construction company that wants to come in, clear out the land, and build a fancy golf resort. Katie is used to a quiet, boring life spent living with her grandmother and working with her friends at the village pub. She is very resistant to change, but has a hard time resisting one of the main men on the construction site, Callum. When she marches over to the site one morning to complain about the noise and damage, sparks fly between Katie and Callum. What will she do when she has to decide whether to protect her village or her heart?

This story was very cute, and I enjoyed the sweet romance and sizzling chemistry between Katie and Callum. I'm also a big fun of stories in which the guy falls first and is the one to make the big, grand gestures rather than the women always having to do it! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

title: The Matchmaker

author: Catherine Walsh

publisher: Bookouture/Kindle

publication date: April 18, 2023

pages: 281

peppers: 2 (on this scale)

warnings: parents die in a car crash years before the book takes place

summary: Katie loves her tiny town in Ireland and her job as a bartender at the only pub in town, so she's furious when a big building corporation buys up most of the town's land, starts noisy construction on a hotel near her home, and threatens to raze the bar to put up a golf clubhouse. She keeps crossing paths with the building projects site manager, which is problematic because he seems like a good guy. To try to prevent the construction from demolishing her favorite places, Katie revives the town's famous matchmaking festival.

tropes:

enemies to lovers
small town v corporate greed
feuding brothers

dead parents
raised by granny
disobedient dog
matchmaking festival

what I liked:

good characters
slow burn
grand gestures and good speeches
good side characters

what I didn’t like:

not too many real obstacles in their path

overall rating: 4 (of 5 stars)

“You told me once that Kelly’s was your favorite place in the world. Well, you’re mine. You’re mine and I’ll go where you go. For as long as you want me to, I’ll be right there with you.”

-small town romance with a fun plot
-Callum Dempsey comes rolling into town with his crew on a hotel project just outside the village, Katie Collins will do whatever it takes to keep the peace
-in order to save the pub and beloved village from the clutches of a bulldozer, she needs to bring back the matchmaker business 🚜🧱👷
-this was a cute and enjoyable read! Callum is a total sweetie 🥰❤️
-thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this ARC!

3.8⭐️

Received an ARC from Netgalley.*

The Matchmaker was an cute and refreshing read. Callum is the slightly grumpy love interest who is in town working a job that is destroying Katie's way of life. Bubbly and determined, Katie takes on Callum and his boss, Jack, in an attempt to save the pub where her parents met.

You can really feel the love everyone has for this place as they come together to host a matchmaking event that may, or may not, save their town.

This book is perfect for lovers of small-town romances with lots of meddling neighbors and family! This was my first Catherine Walsh book and I was hooked by the first chapter. Though the plot line is easy to guess you really enjoy the characters, I was really interested in getting to know more about the side characters. Gemma and Nush in particular. I was so invested in the side characters I was hoping they would each get their own book, unfortutnley that is not the case but still get to see them have their happy ever after!

Catherine Walsh writes exceptional romance, and The Matchmaker was no different. Her characters are so charming, endearing, and witty, I wish I could drop myself into the book and become friends with them!

Katie, the main character, is such a quirky sweetheart. She absolutely adores living in her little Irish village of Ennisbawn, where she has lived her whole life and now is taking care of her feisty grandmother. The village is peaceful and quiet, until a big development company buys up a ton of land and starts building a mega hotel with the hopes of putting Ennisbawn "on the map", much to the chagrin of the locals. To make matters worse, the construction is close to Katie's house and she can barely sleep from the noise after her late night shifts as a bartender. One morning she is fed up and marches over to the site in her pajamas, and reams out Callum, the project manager.

When the development company starts trying to take over even more of the village, Katie decides to revitalize the town's old Matchmaking Festival in the hopes of getting enough attention that there will be bigger backlash about the development company taking over and squashing the local culture. Katie ropes in her two best friends and the rest of the town to do the festival up big, all the while trying to maintain her grudge against the developers and their leader Jack, although she can't seem to stop running into Callum and he isn't nearly as bad as she would have thought...

I loved how fiery Katie and her friends were, and how Katie had absolutely no qualms about being a "small town girl". She loved her village and was so happy to stay there and fight for it - she didn't have big dreams of moving to a city and felt stuck there by necessity, she truly was content with her life and her place in the town. The festival was a super fun storyline and really had me rooting for Katie and the rest of Ennisbawn.

Callum was a great character too - there was great chemistry between him and Katie, and I like how they decide to start dating partway through the book rather than at the very end. And that after they start dating, things aren't just sunshine and roses. There isn't some huge drama or miscommunication, they just have some growing pains and are still trying to get to know each other and figure out their relationship. It felt very real and was so cute, and I felt like it made their relationship seem so much stronger. There was one steamy scene and other implied scenes as well.

The supporting characters were also so well built out and had their own storylines going that I was invested in. Overall this book felt like a warm hug, I absolutely loved it.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Bookouture for the ARC!

The Matchmaker was light, fun, and romantic, a triple threat! I really enjoyed this quick read. The characters were relatable and enjoyable. Callum and Katie were fun to read about, but mainly I loved reading about Ennisburg. The small town was completely charming and led for the perfect place for a story around St. Patrick's Day. This review is entirely my own opinions and thoughts but the advanced copy was provided to me at no cost from the publisher.

Walsh has done it again: “The Matchmaker” is an entertaining read with just the right amount of tension. I was immediately drawn into the rural setting and the character of Katie grabbed my attention from the pyjama-clad beginning.
The burgeoning relationship between Katie and Callum works well, with the right amount of issues and trouble on the path to happiness – their obvious chemistry and witty one-liners make for great reading! Not only are the two main characters entertaining, but I also enjoyed spending time with the secondary characters – especially Granny Maeve!
Walsh can do no wrong in my eyes – her Irish characters are on the ball without being caricatures, the wit is always on point and she manages to make me feel emotional towards these fictional characters and locations. A thoroughly enjoyable read!

This was a cute and fun read! I love a good rom com and this is the perfect book to read around St. Patrick’s Day. I loved seeing Katie’s passion and determination throughout the entire storyline. I also couldn’t get enough of Callum and all the sweet things he would say to her. I do think my favorite character of all is Katie’s grandmother since she’s absolutely hilarious! I did think that the beginning of the book had a slower buildup which made it harder for me to get into. Overall this was a quick and easy read!

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰/5

I knew when I read Holiday Romance that I’d love everything she publishes and, like always, I was right.

This was so hilarious it made me cry, so cute it made me cry, so sad it made me cry. I was reading this book through blurry vision literally the entire time.

Each character is uniquely their own and Catherine does such a good job at making them so lovable I found myself rooting for several relationships besides the main characters.

Katie is hilarious and relatable, the type to start rambling when she gets too nervous and doesn’t stop for half a page but its somehow so interesting and funny you cling to every word.

Callum’s passionate and kind ~ the kind to help your granny without expecting anything in return. My heart aches in the best ways thinking of them.

Kenny is here like always and I can proudly say that this book has been cat approved 🐈‍⬛

If you are looking for a little escapism then this book is for you.

The Matchmaker is a romcom set in Ireland that follows Katie who loves her little town and will defend it at all costs against the big corporation who threatens to come in and change it completely. Enter Callum who works for said corporation and already causing drama for our protagonist.

This isn't my favourite Walsh novel, Katie was a little unbearable at times and the writing felt a little more rushed than others. As always with Walsh's work I find the use of US English quite jarring and very out of character for a novel set in Ireland (with no Americans present). However, it was a good way to get lost in a story for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

3.5 rounded up to 4.

“I’ve spent my life trying to figure out what made me happy, what I wanted to do with my days if I was brave enough to try. I never found it. Not until I came here.”
Catherine Walsh has firmly established herself as an excellent romance writer - her relationships are always swoony and fizzing with chemistry, her heroines delightful, and her happy endings always full of warm fuzzies.

The Matchmaker, Walsh’s fourth book, is no different, and made fireworks go off in my heart just as her previous novels have done. It’s less focused on romance than her previous novel, Holiday Romance, but’s just as compelling, sweet and swoony.

Katie Collins,has lived her whole life in Ennisbawn, a sleepy Irish town that’s currently being low-key terrorised by a building company, Glenmill Industries, who are intent on destroying Ennisbawn for profit, and Katie is intent on stopping them. The town has one pub left - Katie’s home away from home and place of employment - Kelly’s. And when it’s threatened, Katie pulls out all the stops to save her hometown.

Her big idea? To revive a Matchmaking festival the town used to put on to drum up some notice and sympathy for her little town, and push Glenmill out. This is complicated, of course, by Glenmill’s handsome head of security, Callum, and Katie’s instant attraction to him. Their meet-cute on the building site was genuinely hilarious as well as quite sweet, and Walsh’s decision to fit a romance into this narrative of small-town destruction works so well - it’s not quite enemies-to-lovers but there’s a frisson between Katie and Callum that adds to their chemistry.

And such chemistry! This is, to date, Walsh’s sexiest book. Callum and Katie have an instant attraction that builds over the course of the novel, and there are a couple of slightly steamy scenes in this one that are compelling, fun and add to the narrative. Traditionally a “closed door” author, this is a departure for the author, and a welcome one.

Other stalwarts of Walsh’s writing are present and welcome, too, including loveable side characters (Nush and Monica spin-off pls!), whip-smart, genuinely funny writing, and a sensitive and nuanced look at sadder themes that add richness while never dragging down the plot. In this novel, Katie’s parents have sadly passed away, and Katie still feels the effects of that in her life - but it’s well-handled and even moves the plot forward so it never feels shoe-horned in.

A lovely depiction of the more positive sides of small town life - the sense of community, of working together, and of being one big family.

Overall, The Matchmaker is a big, warm hug of a book that I was absolutely charmed by. Another banger from Catherine Walsh!