This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEW BY DEBS CARR
We don't review ebooks here at Novelicious, but we're making one exception with this book as it's been shortlisted for the RNA Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers.
Jack Miller has just sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic, but before he can get to his intended destination, he has a problem with his boat and ends up docking at the small Irish town of Durna. He is sent to the local pub, The Maiden's Arms to find Devine, the ship chandler, who he hopes will be able to find the necessary parts so that he can continue with his journey.
When Jack arrives at the pub, he finds Annie Devine. She is a chocolatier, who has been living in Dublin for the past two years since being jilted at the altar. Annie has reluctantly returned to her home town to stand in for her sick father as the Matchmaker at the Annual Durna Matchmaking Festival. She mistakes Jack for one of the entrants and insists on taking his details and photograph to enter them in the matchmaking book. When she discovers that he has nowhere to stay, she offers him a room in her parent's home.
The local men know Annie is single and iit seems to Jack that they're more interested in her than the other entrants. He admits that he's only in Durna until his boat can be repaired and isn't in the town for the festival, and suggests that they pretend to be a couple so that she's left alone to get on with the job of matchmaker.
Annie is a chocolatier and can't wait to return to Dublin to take part in a contest that is the chocolatier's version of the Oscars. Jack has his own personal agenda. Not only does he have a deadline to keep for his successful marketing business, but he has someone from his past that he needs to find. The mutual attraction between the two intensifies, but just when they seem to be getting close, their ambitions and personal lives get in the way. How can they ever hope to have a relationship, or any future together if they live on seperate sides of the Atlantic and want such different things?
This book starts with Jack battling through a storm in his boat and continues to keep the attention right though to the satisfying ending. The sexual chemistry is brilliantly written as beautiful, but self-conscious Annie and rugged, millionaire Jack with his difficult past, begin to fall in love. The story sweeps you along and is sometimes funny, occasionally sad, as we learn the full extent of Jack's personal tragedy and comforting too as they both begin to discover things about themselves they hadn't thought of before.
I started to read this book on the last morning of my trip to Sorrento and didn't stop reading through two flights – both unbelievably with the same Captain whose landing skills leave a lot to be desired – and ended up finishing just before arriving back in Jersey.
You can visit Sally Clement's Website here
Catch Me A Catch is published by the Wild Rose Press and you can find out more and read an excerpt here