They say that looks can be deceiving, and in the case of Erynn Mangum’s Miss Match, this is certainly true. At first glance the novel suggests a pithy chick-lit with a plot strongly oriented around romance and match-making. But perhaps the cover designer should have considered adding a jazzy little banner saying “contains real Bible extracts!” I’ve had Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door who were more subtle in spreading the word than this book is.

Lauren Holbrook is a twenty-three year old who has sworn off marriage and romance because…well, I’m not entirely sure. Something about not wanting to leave her father all on his lonesome now that her sisters have married and moved out of home. When not pontificating about why marriage is wrong for her, Lauren spends her days eating chocolate and hot dogs, working as a photographer’s assistant, and engaging in scripture quoting contests with her spunky boss Brandon. To really up the ante, she also gets involved in the odd bit of match-making, helping teens sign off on the dotted nuptials line in mere months. (No, I’m not kidding, at twenty-three Lauren is already a spinster in her uber-religious friends’ eyes, and it seems as though the average time between meeting and getting married is about six months. I guess that no sex before marriage thing has something to do with that…)

But Lauren’s cushy life begins to unravel when a new girl (who is a non-Christian! And wears high heels!) arrives in the office and looks as though she wants to get her claws into Brandon. After a bit of random posturing and whining, Lauren manages to make friends with her new coworker (dragging her along to Bible study class, no less), and the two set about match-making and encouraging the rest of their small town to marry off before they hit their twenties. But somewhere in between doughnuts, Bible quoting, and match-making, however, Lauren has the sudden epiphany that she may indeed wish to get married herself. Indeed, she craves the very idea…never mind the fact that she doesn’t actually have anyone in particular that she’d like to marry. Her new challenge, it turns out, is to admit to those around her that marriage isn’t quite the anathema she imagined it to be.

Um.

As you might have gleaned from my summary, this book is slight to say the least. Though the plot is apparently based on Jane Austen’s Emma, Miss Match is far less successful as a novel. The characters are painfully thin, with Lauren in particular difficult to parse–her motivation for not wanting to get married is very hazy, and her sudden decision that tying the knot is desirous comes out of nowhere.

Perhaps it’s that the author makes such a big deal of it all (and perhaps this is a big deal in devout Christian circles, who knows) that’s the issue. If the approach to Lauren’s beliefs about marriage hadn’t been so heavy handed, it might have been easier to simply see it all as the capriciousness expected of a young twenty-something. Instead, the author tries to get deep and meaningful with us, and woe-is-me pasts and scripture quotes drag things down, attempting to add weight to a book that is really about as frivolous as it gets.

In particular, Lauren’s match-making ways seem out of place given her beliefs about marriage, and their role in the plot is sketchy at best (and one has to wonder that given how ultra-religious this book is, whether the audience would take well to Lauren’s “God ordained my match-making ways! God said so!” perspective.) I know that the author needs to keep things moving, but really, so many teenaged couples get engaged in this book after knowing each other only a few months that there’s some serious need of a relationship counsellor character, or at least some stretching out of the timeline to ensure that the audience isn’t left feeling a wee bit icky. If I were these kids’ parents, I’d be having some serious sit-down chats with them about getting to know their partner before committing to marriage (and let’s face it, divorce isn’t on the agenda here). Everyone is just so young, and oh, how they act it. Lauren, though apparently in her early twenties, acts far more like someone in her mid-teens–and so do those around her.

Unfortunately, the novel isn’t just implausible, but it’s judgemental as well. Despite Lauren’s giggly, pat approach to life and love, there’s some serious prejudice against non-Christians in here. Not a Christian? Lauren won’t be your Facebook friend. Two particular scenes come to mind: that in which Lauren’s coworker is dragged along to scripture class, and another where Lauren refuses to allow her matchmaking to involve a non-Christian.

Then, of course, there’s the heavy-handed Bible quotation stuff–these characters lob scripture quotes at each other as though it’s fun, light banter–and the somewhat painful scene in which Brandon gets on his religious soapbox, which succeeded in alienating me almost entirely as a reader. And let’s not get started on the marriage for marriage’s sake thing, because I’ll end up on a soapbox of my own and you’ll never hear the end of it.

Miss Match may well be a hit with its intended audience, but potential readers should take note that though this book seems to be a straight-forward chick-lit, what you’ll be getting is a crash course in Sunday school.

Rating: (serious flaws)

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Other books by Erynn Mangum: