Miss Match (Orca Currents)

Written by Susan Hughes

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459842069

144 pp.

Ages 9–12

RL 2.8 

April 2025 

With Grade 8 almost finished and summer just weeks away, thirteen-year-old Polly, along with her friends Dev, Zoey, Roger and Matt, starts thinking about how to make a little money for summertime fun like going to the movies and baseball games, enjoying fast food, and shopping. Polly, ever the entrepreneur, comes up with the idea of a matchmaking service for all the Grade 7 and 8 students attending the end-of-year dance.

When they advertise their service and get students to submit applications with a $20 fee–money-back guarantee–they are overwhelmed with responses. They pull in over $2000 and Polly is tasked with setting up a dedicated bank account for the money. When she is unable to do so, Polly lies. It becomes the first of several lies she makes to her friends and her mother to cover up her embarrassment and fears of how they will judge her. Readers will wonder what her classmates would think about the accuracy of the nickname they've given her, i.e., Miss Match, if they knew the discrepancy between what she promises and what she actually does.

Susan Hughes has dazzled this reader with the breadth of her writing. I have reviewed her picture books (e.g., What Happens Next), her middle-grade novels (e.g., Four Seasons of Patrick), her YA (e.g., Virginia), and her non-fiction (e.g., Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World). Each time, Susan Hughes writes with sensitivity and understanding. In Miss Match, she reminds us that everyone comes up with ideas some time, and some of them will be fantastic and some will be ludicrous. How we deal with our successes or our failures will speak more to our natures and strengths than the accolades or the judgements. Susan Hughes knows this and ensures that Polly comes across as a real person, who actually has a great idea but can't always deliver on it because she is shy, she is nervous about being judged, and she is young. Fortunately, she hangs around with a great bunch of people whose understanding of what it's like to be 13 is evident. They don't just forgive, they empathize.

 

While Miss Match is part of the Orca Currents series of high-interest novels for middle-grade students reading below grade level (reading level here is 2.8), Susan Hughes does not take short-cuts by giving readers a simple plot with little substance. She packs in issues of dishonesty, first crushes, inclusion–her friends are diverse in their abilities and disabilities, in their nationalities, and even in their gender-loving nature—and more. She tells the story with sensitivity and understanding but gives readers an ending that is satisfying without being contrived. Perhaps after celebrating a few more birthdays and with a little more experience, Miss Match could see herself in business again, providing a valuable service and growing her entrepreneur skills, one match at a time.

Recommended Reading

Written by Paul Coccia

Zando Young Readers

978-1-63893-149-2

320 pp.

Ages 12-17

January 2025

 

Seventeen-year-old Bobby Ashton has got a plan for the perfect summer before college. He's got plans for a perfect job, the perfect boyfriend, and more. The problems with planning everything down to the last second is that "it only takes one second to throw it all off." (p. vii)

 

All goes amiss when Bobby's big-gesture proclamation of love for his crush Truman becomes a streamed fiasco of broken glass and more, landing Bobby and his mother Cass in the office of Little Elm College's Dean Perez. Bobby loses his job at Campus Books, is removed from his freshman liaison gig for the Big Summer Reading Festival, and he could lose his scholarship and even his admission. His grand gesture was an epic fail, but Bobby is nothing except determined and resilient. His mother, a renowned but retired artist, makes a deal with the Dean to create a sculpture for the college out of the broken glass, and Bobby promises to stay out of trouble.

 

First thing Bobby does is get his Uncle Andy, a friend of Cass's, to let him work at his bookstore Corner Books, a  run-down bookstore that mostly carries used books. And with that new endeavour, the plan for The Summer of Bobby (AKA Bobby Ashton's Plan for the Perfect Summer Before College) begins to transform. Everything Bobby thought he needed for the perfect summer, from the job and the boyfriend to his fashion and achievements, start to change. His tasks may start off as seemingly manageable, like playing nice with crotchety Gladys at the bookstore to overhauling Corner Books to bring in more customers, but Bobby is nothing but persistent. And his new reputation as the Book Whisperer, the young man who knows just the right book for each person, helps make things happen.

 

One of the bookstore visitors Bobby meets is Luke, a college student, with whom he becomes friends. But Bobby knows that after his romantic fiasco, Dean Perez had warned him off of boys, telling him that, "Adolescent crushes will still be there after you graduate." (p. 10) That doesn't stop Bobby from doing a little matchmaking with others, like Luke's roommate Jerome and Mya, the coffee shop girl, his mom and Andy, and even best friend Wanda and a gamer called chickn-backflip. Will it be enough romance for Bobby, affectionately called Casanova by Luke a.k.a. the love Grinch, or will Bobby find himself falling for the least romantic guy around?

 

If you're a book lover, you'll adore Recommended Reading for its literary references and bookshop character. If you're a romantic, you'll fall in love with the dreamy Bobby and his efforts to help others connect, and find his own true love, albeit circuitously. If you appreciate reading about characters that are real, dealing with issues of missteps that need to be corrected and of body image and self-acceptance, while being fanciful and hopeful, then Paul Coccia's Recommended Reading is recommended for you. Paul Coccia, whose earlier books include I Got You Babe, Leon Levels Up, On the Line (co-written with Eric Walters) and The Player, gives us teens who are authentic in their feelings, whether it be their fears or loves, relationships or insecurities. These teens haven't got it all figured out, yet, but they are looking for ways to understand themselves and how they fit in with others. There are no easy fixes–are there any in life for anyone?–but they're trying. Bobby is looking for love and to have a positive impact on his community. He makes mistakes but he connects with people, whether through his book recommendations or through his sensitivity. And he does so with personality–and lots of book and movie references–and an awesome fashion sense.

 

Bobby may be the Book Whisperer but he's also the guy you want to have in your corner to cheer you on, help you find love, and to appreciate yourself. And with Recommended Reading, Paul Coccia gives readers the opportunity to fall in love with Bobby.

Playing with Matches

by Suri Rosen
ECW Press
978-1-77041-182-1
256 pp.
Ages 11+
September, 2014

Forgive me my ignorance but I have to share my silly prediction about Playing with Matches before I read the book. When I first read the title, I thought the book must deal with arson and lighting fires.  Wrong!  But, though Playing with Matches doesn't have anything to do with fire, teen narrator Raina Resnick learns pretty quickly that you can still get burned with romantic matches!

With her older sister Leah getting married in a few months to Ben and starting their new life together in Toronto, Raina is sent to live with her Aunt Mira and Uncle Eli in Toronto to provide some stability from her parents' regular migrations for her dad's work and to be there for her sister prior to the marriage.  But when Ben calls off the wedding because of Raina's behaviour and Leah blames Raina for ruining her happiness, Raina feels completely friendless.  Not surprising she befriends a woman, Tamara, with whom she regularly sits on the bus to school.  In fact, learning that Tamara is single and desperate to find a life partner, Leah arranges for her to meet Jeremy, the thirty-ish Jewish man who boards with Aunt Mira and Uncle Eli.

This is the beginning of Matchmaven.com, the site Raina uses to communicate anonymously and arrange the match between Tamara and Jeremy which is a hit. (Though not so much for Leah whom Aunt Mira had planned to set up with Jeremy!)  But when Tamara shares the site with her friends, including Leah, Raina is left wondering whether she actually has a gift for matchmaking or if it was just luck.

Meanwhile, Raina is being watched very carefully at home and at school to ensure she's not up to her old antics.  Taking care of her grandmother, Bubby Bayla, Raina finds the older woman has great spirit and skill for getting into her own trouble, but she is supportive of Raina.  Then a fortuitous mistake (while running an errand for her aunt) introduces Raina to a Professor Kellman, a lonely widower with a computer which he allows her to use for her matchmaking, unknowingly.  And the pairing of Raina at school with a geeky girl, Dahlia Engel, to help Raina with her school work brings a tech wizard and friend to Raina finally.

The complexity and hilarity of Raina attempting to control her matchmaking enterprise, which continues to blossom through word of mouth, while trying to make things right with Leah (including finding Leah her own partner) and keeping up her school work and resolving the trouble that caused her to leave her last school and humiliate her family will keep the reader eager to turn the page and learn what else can go wrong or perhaps right. Raina has much to worry about, including the possibility of "matchmaking malpractice" (pg. 146) but with her growing maturity and good heart, Raina has all of the best intentions and is less negligent with her actions and voice.

Playing with Matches is a fabulously unique story–formal matchmaking is definitely not a regular theme in YA–that embeds all the angst of falling in love and growing up and doing right by your family and yourself all under one cover.  I believe that the story will definitely resonate more for Jewish readers who may understand the cultural nuances of dating, dress, and relationships better than I could.  Having grown up in Toronto, I couldn't understand how the only people Raina met were Jewish, or how she happens to enter the wrong house far from home and it be the unlocked home of a Jewish man that her aunt knows, or that her sister's fiancé would break off the wedding because of something inconsiderate Raina did (not murderous, just inconsiderate).  Those inexplicable questions kept me from buying wholeheartedly into the story.

But Suri Rosen can turn a phrase well and get me laughing with the antics of her characters, who are definitely larger than life, and undoubtedly has a plethora of stories to tell if Playing with Matches is any indication of the experiences with which she is well versed. I look forward to reading more from this author (though I hope she will recognize that not all her readers are Jewish and may need a bit more background to understand the full story).