BOOK REVIEW: Match Me If You Can by Michelle Willingham

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Match Me If You Can by Michelle Willingham is the delightful third book in the Regency Romance series, The School For Spinsters.

Emma Bartholomew is a low-status gentlewoman who has not succeeded in finding a husband despite five seasons in the marriage mart. Her stepmother is resorting to desperate measures (an auction!) to marry her off. Emma’s failure to attract a husband is due to a lack of self-confidence which is in turn due to the fact that she is almost blind. She has none of the usual female accomplishments. But she does possess an internal strength that has helped her to navigate the world though she is nearly sightless. And she refuses to be auctioned off. She takes herself to Miss Harding’s School for Young Ladies, otherwise known as the School for Spinsters. Miss Harding is a matchmaker.

Cormac Ormond, Earl of Dunmeath, is in desperate need of a wife and, even more importantly, an heir. So desperate, he has an off-putting tendency to propose to women within 10 minutes of meeting them. His desperation stems from the belief that he is dying of the same illness that took his grandfather, father, and older brother. It’s a family curse, affecting only the males. 

Cormac meets Emma at a party where they briefly converse. They meet again at the School, where Miss Harding has invited Cormac and a few other men to dinner so that Emma can practice conversation. Cormac deduces Emma’s secret blindness. But he also understands the strength of her character. Emma is drawn to him, yet when he blurts her secret out in company, making her an object of pity as well as ridicule, she believes he is untrustworthy and wants nothing further to do with him. Until he confides his secret to her.

Emma doesn’t believe in the family curse, although she certainly believes in his illness. She’s determined to save him. This novel highlights the struggles of these unconventional protagonists as they find their way to love.