B-
Genre: Chick Lit, Contemporary Romance, Romance, Women's Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Archetype: Chef/Foodie/Bartender, Diverse Protagonists
CW: emotional abuse by parents
The first thing you need to know about Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club is that it will make you hungry. Sophie is a matchmaker in Toronto, and she loves food even more than romance. Sophie and her clients eat their way across the city, evocatively describing curry buns, guava candies, duck egg congee, nasi goreng, fruity pavlovas, and Krispy Kreme donuts.
The second thing you should know is that while Sophie does get a HEA, this book is more contemporary magical realism than romance. Sophie lives in a world just like ours, only with the ability to see the magical red threads attached to people yearning for love all around us. When two people connect romantically, their threads braid together, either tightly or loosely depending on the strength of the connection.
Perhaps this is a good time to mention that I hate magical realism. I prefer the fantastical world building of fantasy novels, and find random sprinkles of magic jarring in a contemporary setting. I struggled to get into Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club, even though it’s a charming book. If you’re not a magic un-realist like me, you might have an easier time.
I’m going to share the blurb so you see exactly what I knew going into this book.
Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast.
In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.
At the opening of the book Sophie has indeed arrived back in town, leased a flat in a building with lots of older people, and started excitedly networking with potential customers desperate for her services. But looming over her is the epic failure referred to in the book’s description. I dreaded picking up the book at first, awaiting her humiliation. It takes a while to plod along to Sophie’s crash and burn.
Thankfully that scene is brief and Sophie very quickly turns things around, picking up a growing number of fascinating matchmaking clients. I disagree with the blurb’s description of Sophie as an “outcast.” While she certainly loses potential customers once news of her lack of accreditation gets out, she’s still able to navigate her community easily, and desperate clients quickly sign up with her.
I expected this book to focus on Sophie’s older clients, and it did. But because she’s juggling so many of them, plus other clients she picks up along the way, we don’t get to sink into any particular romantic pairing. Based on the blurb, I’d imagined a whimsical story, but the book’s tone is quiet and wistful. Sophie’s older clients have poignant stories, like a ballroom dancing widower who can’t forget his past love and dance partner. Or two gay BFFs who can’t see they’re perfect for one another. My personal favorite is a cat show champion who only wants to talk about cats. Not everyone gets a happy ending, but glimpses of each love story are delightful, if brief. We see the relationships from Sophie’s point of view, and once she views those red threads twine together across the room, she’s happy. I wished we could have seen the relationships develop over time, and see how couples interact in detail. Still, I liked how each older client felt unique, and never stereotypical.
Readers who hate toxic family dynamics might struggle with this book because one of the major storylines is Sophie learning to stand up to her parents. Sophie is an optimistic person who’s been saddled with cartoonishly unsupportive parents. Her mother is emotionally abusive, belittling Sophie in public, and alternating between ordering her around and giving her the silent treatment. Her father is in thrall to his wife and manipulates Sophie into financing a lavish lifestyle they can’t afford. Sophie can barelyafford to feed herself because she’s paying for designer handbags and diamond jewelry for her mom.
The Old Ducks and Sophie’s friends both comment on how terrible her parents are, but Sophie spends most of the book doing whatever her parents want, even when it hurts her. Like Sophie, I began to dread the moments her Mom would pop in to terrorize her.
The matchmaking magic leaves Sophie’s unable to see her own red thread of romantic connection, so she decides to focus on other people’s romances. Similarly, the book doesn’t delve very deeply into Sophie’s love story with her first client her own age, a tough-to-match challenge she calls Mr. Particular. There’s not much to say about Sophie’s slow realization that she’s into her client, other than he seems like a generically nice guy, and he knows where to get the best braised beef tendon in town. They’re clearly a good match, but I wasn’t nearly as invested in their love story as I was in seeing Sophie find a chosen family for herself with the Old Ducks.
Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club is a quiet book about building multi-generational friendships while eating yummy food. I loved the way it depicted the multifaceted lives of older people seeking love, but the romances felt too superficial to satisfy me as a romance fan.
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While reading this review I got a message that Smart Bitches wanted to use my kindle’s camera!
An accreditation for a matchmaker?? Please tell me this too is fictional and does not actually exist. What are you going to accredit- how long the matched people stay together?
I need books which don’t feature yummy food. Currently awaiting the scheduling of the removal of my gallbladder, and existing on steamed vegetables and boiled chicken because my body hates me. There needs to be more women’s romantic fiction featuring gruel – or at least, narrators who say “Then we ate dinner, but really, who needs to hear about that?”
I feel you @Tam! For me it was canned tuna with a little lemon or broth. And the last thing I wanted to hear about was what people were eating.
Regarding the book: I’m a little turn. I love me some magical realism, but doormat main characters or so not my favorite thing
Great review.
Torn. A little turn. Autocorrect you fail me once again.
@Tam how about military field rations? There was a pretty funny plot thread in Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold (check content warnings though, it’s not a light fluffy book.)
Oh, this sounds delicious in more ways than one!
I also wonder how the heck one becomes an accredited matchmaker. This sounds like the pure fictional aspect of it?
The spoiler on the red thread flailing while the other ignores them sounds like my own life :/