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In this moving story about losing and finding love again, a woman sets out to find the perfect matches for those closest to her.
Forty-eight-year-old Nantucketer Dabney Kimball Beech has always had a gift for matchmaking. Some call her ability mystical, while others, her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man, call it meddlesome. But there's no arguing with her results: With 42 happy couples to her credit and all of them still together, Dabney has never been wrong about romance.
Never, that is, except in the case of herself and Clendenin Hughes, the green-eyed boy who took her heart with him long ago when he left the island to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist. Now, after spending twenty-seven years on the other side of the world, Clen is back on Nantucket, and Dabney has never felt so confused, or so alive.
But when tragedy threatens her own second chance, Dabney must face the choices she's made and share painful secrets with her family. Determined to make use of her gift before it's too late, she sets out to find perfect matches for those she loves most.
"Charming, poignant…Hilderbrand's narrative is thoroughly readable, with likable heroes and believably despicable antagonists…Hilderbrand's story is an engaging read." ―Publishers Weekly
"Hilderbrand has crafted another of her delectable beach reads, complete with a fairy-tale romance... . Delicious." ―Booklist
"The odd thing about The Matchmaker is that I fell for it, not because of the love triangle or Dabney's matchmaking skills, but because it's a loving portrait of an island. Hilderbrand has an ear and an eye for the people of Surfside and Siasconset ... It's like renting a cottage on Nantucket for the weekend — breezy and sad when you come to the end. The Matchmaker gives you a taste of island life without having to invest in oceanfront property." ―Boston Globe
"The queen regent of the easy-breezy summer read." ―New York Post
This information about The Matchmaker was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elin Hilderbrand is the author of twenty-eight novels, including The Hotel Nantucket. She is a proud 1991 graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she majored in Writing Seminars. In her senior year at Hopkins, Elin had her first short story, "Misdirection," accepted for publication in Seventeen Magazine.
After a short stint working in publishing and teaching in New York City, she moved to Nantucket permanently in 1994. She attended the University of Iowa writers workshop and earned her MFA in 1998, and published her first novel, The Beach Club, in the summer of 2000. Her 2019 novel, Summer of "69 SUMMER OF '69 was her first novel to debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She is the mother of three children and loves riding the Peloton, cooking, and going to the beach. She...
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