DNF @ 30%

I really wanted to like this book. The cover and the premise made me think this was going to be a fun rom-com. I've since discovered that I was way off. Instead of a rom-com with a "Married at First Sight" premise we actually got literary fiction about communication in romantic relationships.

Now I have no problems with literary fiction, it just was not what I was expecting from the synopsis, premise and cover.

My main gripe is that the marriage doesn't take place until 56% in and we don't meet the love interest until the 50% mark. And then all of the important events, such as the marriage, the wedding night etc happen OFF PAGE.

And here comes my second gripe. There's just dialogue. There are minimal descriptions, we don't see any of the important events happening, the dialogue is super clunky and sounds like all of the characters word-vomit all of the time. We're told about all of the important events through dialogue later, which really detached me from the book.

I don't know if this was intentional or not, but this book tells, it doesn't show. And because of the telling and not showing, I could not connect to the characters or care about the plot.

This one just was not for me.

An easy enough read but I wasn’t a fan of Hannah and I felt like it ended quite abruptly without too much exploration. I think there was too much ‘pre’ wedding and not enough on the aftermath which is where my interest lied.

A group of singles agree to marry partners chosen for them by a team of relationship experts. Looking forward to a perfect match, they meet their mates for the first time on their wedding 👰🤵💒

First book I've read by this author & definitely won't be the last. Heartwarming, romantic, perfect escapism for a windy afternoon. I have never seen the TV show of the same name, but think I might have to give it a watch now, it sounds like fun!

Singleton Jen is using various dating apps to try find her Mr Right & isn't having much luck, as she's looking for more than a one night stand.
Her friend Hannah married Tom twenty odd years ago & has twins. The couple have just created a new dating app & keen to help her friends save their business/home she decides she'll find her husband using their app & for it to be publicised for promotion.

Would you meet your future husband for the first time at the altar having only exchanged blog posts between you?

Many thanks to Netgalley for my ARC in return for my honest review.

𝗜 𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 5 ⭐ 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴

I really, really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't. 3/5 🌟

• What I liked : The online dating concept of the book was really jnteresting, and I really enjoyed how it was explored in terms of the storyline. Hannah and Jess were relatable at times too. Their friendship was the best thing about the book, in my opinion.

• What I didn't like : The book was wordy, and I felt as if the story dragged on without any particular reason. The incidents that were important to the plot didn't have enough depth either. There were a lot of loopholes in the storyline too, which made me confused about how the characters' lives were turning out. I wanted so much more!!! 😭

After reading a thriller I always like to go for something light, happy, and a bit of romance thrown in there too. This didn't disappoint!
I am a huge fan of Married at First Sight so this was like reading about the show. It had lots of fun, comedy and love, mixed in with a little sadness and heartache.
This was a story about friendship, families, marriage and falling in love.
Perfect light hearted read

A simple story about online dating. It seems to have been based on the same idea as the tv programme Married at First Sight. I’m afraid it didn’t grab me and I found it rather boring in the beginning. I enjoyed the letters Hannah and Toby wrote to each other but found the story only really got interesting from the wedding onwards. I was disappointed their relationship after the wedding wasn’t explored, and felt it ended too abruptly. I wanted to see how the next year or so panned out for them. If you enjoy a light hearted look at dating and a story that doesn’t tax your brain you might enjoy this book.

Did not finish after 30%
I’m sorry but I just couldn’t continue. The heroine annoyed me so much that I cannot read it anymore at this point.

Very grateful for my review copy to the publisher.

I‘m really so so sorry, but I couldn‘t finish reading this book... 🙈

Usually I think, that if someone spent so much time writing a book and risks so much by releasing it, you‘d have to honour that work and finish reading this book. But I couldn‘t finish it properly. I have to admit that I‘ve read a bit more than half of it but then I was just so annoyed by the main characters and the story was so long-winded that I decided to just flip trough the last pages and read for gist.

Why did the author choose Jess as one of the POVs? Can‘t understand it. Toby would have been so much more interesting than her. I thought it‘ll be the story of a woman and a man who don‘t know each other and are getting married at first sight. So why is half of the book dominated by a selfish friend‘s POV who‘s more or less wailing or lamenting about her unhappiness in her own marriage and her life in general? That is so annoying. And also boring.
Hannah... I‘m not sure what I should think about her. She does not really know what she wants in life. She wants that marriage though she not really realizes what it means to have a serious relationship and that it‘s not just fun. Sometimes it feels like she is still a teenage girl. Not as annoying as her bestie, but nontheless exhausting.

You have to read 200 pages until you get to the point where the story itself begins, the marriage day. 200 pages of Jess-lamenting and lots of blah.

I thought it would be a funny romcom when I‘ve read the blurb but nope, so not my thing.
As I said, I‘m sorry, but I didn‘t want to spend more time on this story I couldn‘t get on with and therefore stopped reading it.

Really enjoyed this, kept me wanting to read until the end. The characters were interesting and got you invested in them wanting to find out what was going to happen.

A really funny book that give me lots of laughs
At first I worried that the premise was a little cliche but way I was completely wrong.
The writing is fantastic.
A good book to escape from real life

Jess is married to her long – time boyfriend and they have twins. She is the owner of the dating app with difference, Save the Date, that promises to match people who are interested in long term relationships. But it doesn’t run as good as Jess thought it’s going to and she’s in desperate need to increase the membership numbers. Jess’s best friend Hannah, a free spirit travelling the world, is now home and working together with Jess. She’s permanently single and maybe it’s time for her to find her second half? So to increase the publicity and maybe to help herself, Hannah offers herself in a kind od experiment – Jess should find her a husband through Save the Date, whom she’s going to meet on their wedding day. Nothing can go wrong, it’s a win – win situation: they are going to marry then and live happily ever after and Jess will keep her business. Right?

So I requested this book because a) I love this title, it’s brilliant and eye – catching and you simply can’t wait for the great story inside and b) I just wanted to see if perhaps it’s going to be better than Claire Frost’s debut novel that, sadly, didn’t work for me so well and I thought, well, what can go wrong, let’s try. I loved the concept in „Married at First Swipe“, it’s brilliant and with the right development it could be a great read. Sadly, it didn’t deliver. It was slow – paced and sometimes I had a feeling that nothing happens, and sometimes that other things happen that bring nothing to the plot. I couldn’t warm to the characters, couldn’t relate with them, they had everything and still they were all so unhappy and it didn’t sit with me.

The novel was dominated by dialogues. The characters talked a lot, often it took them a page or two to eventually say what they wanted to say. There were many words but not much to see if you know what I mean, Jess and Hannah talked and talked and talked but we have never seen the things they talked about, never experienced them. And no matter how eloquent you are, when you speak with your best friends, you come straight to the point and not exaggerate for hours – and it felt like this when reading their conversations. It felt unrealistic and forced, not real. I had a feeling that the author skipped all the parts that could have made the book outstanding – the interviewing of the candidates, the hen do, the honeymoon, the wedding itself – only to let Hannah and Jess talk about it later! Hello – I wanted to experience those things too! Not only hear about them.

The story – telling felt a bit wooden and without heart, to be honest. The overwhelming feeling was this of negativity, everybody seemed so unhappy and stressed all the time. I also think that not informing us at the very beginning that Hannah made it to her wedding day took us the tension away and only going through the motions of getting to that day was not enough. I was hoping for fun, for two people getting to know each other and the story lacked very much in this dynamics.

I was pretty sure the book is going to focus on Hannah and her shenanigans with her new husband, so the focus on Jess and her problems took me a little by surprise, and I think the author wanted to show here the pressure that women are under, trying to juggle married life with school runs and work. Jess’s marriage was going to the wall and she didn’t feel happy anymore, feeling that she has to do everything, which ended in never – ending stress between her and her husband that also affects the whole tone of her subplot.

Altogether, it was an easy and light read that you may enjoy – perhaps it will work better for you.

DNF at 65% - I thought that the characters were likeable at the beginning although throughout they began to become irritating and frustrating. Nothing was happening throughout the book and all the pivotal moments were missed!

I really like the TV program "Married at first Sight" and that is what drew me to this book, and I did enjoy the concept, it cold have been take a bit further than it was, some times I felt the author "lost her way" a little bit, but if your on holiday round the pool and just need to read a few pages / chapters at a time you will not forget where you are, not what I would class as a page turner but I have certainly read a lot worse.

I would have liked the Epilogue to be years into the future to get a better view of what happened to these characters, maybe that's for another book.

I loved both of the main characters, Hannah and Jess. Both were so different but very relatable. I loved the relationship Hannah had with her G-Ma.
This book left me wanting more in a few places; details on how Hannah felt during the wedding, what Toby looked like, what their first impressions of each other were. I felt the author was trying to cram too many ideas into the book without expanding on those ideas.
We got to learn about a lot of things what were happening in the book, but didn’t get to experience them at all. It jumped quite a lot of important events with a ‘ the next morning, they woke up ‘ which i was disappointed about.

I did read a very similar book recently, but overall, I preferred this one.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for my copy of this book via Netgalley. I loved the fun that Claire brought to Living My Best Li(f)e. I was excited to read Married at First Swipe. I love the show Married at First Sight so I was excited by this premise.

We have two main characters Jess and Hannah. I loved both women even though they were very different. Hannah is impulsive. So far she has lived life on a bit of a whim. Jess is the organised one. The one who does the right thing. She married her childhood sweetheart, they had twins and bought a house. Jess feels her life has got stuck while Hannah dreams of having that security.

I did feel like we heard about a lot of things when Jess and Hannah talked but didn't get to experience them. We skipped the hen do and the whole honeymoon which would have been really interesting to read about rather than Jess and Hannah discussing it after the event. I also felt like the book ended abruptly. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of their marriage and to see what happened with Jess and her husband.

The blog posts on the Save The Date website were really interesting. I loved seeing what both characters said in response to the questions. I think a chapter or two from Toby’s POV would have been really cool.

Claire does an excellent job of keeping the book current with the app and how social media plays a part in business these days. This is clearly well thought out.

This is a light entertaining read that you can easily spend an afternoon or two escaping to.

A fun book which allowed me to escape from reality and disappear for a few hours. It's a book which deserves to be read on a beach and hopefully will be soon!

I've not read anything from this author but I saw the cover and I was intrigued. Then I read the blurb and I had to click review. It was such a great read. I loved the storyline and the characters. I hope to read more from this author

Jess and Hannah have always been best friends but Hannah has been unlucky in love.

When she came home to Manchester after years of travelling abroad she luckily gets a job working for Jess on her dating app ‘save the date’. The take up isn’t as good as Jess had hoped so she decides to run a competition which kills two birds with stone - promoting her business and finding Hannah a husband.

The wedding day comes around - is it love at first swipe?

This book was really easy to read but I found the build up to the wedding day more entertaining than the part of the story after.

The relationship between Jess and her husband Tom, and the dynamic with Hannah being so close to the pair was really well thought and made it feel more real. Jess was so engrossed in helping her friend that her own relationship was neglected.

I did enjoy this but it did leave me wanting more in places.

There wasn’t a character I didn’t really like and the family structure and characterisation really helped to build a full picture of how all three protagonists(including Hannah’s new husband) were as people.

When I read the premise, my first reaction was horror at allowing anyone to choose anyone else's spouse, but the operative word here is 'allowing'. Hannah was able to walk away at any time during the process.

But this book isn't so much about how you find your life partner, but what you do once you get them. Hannah and Jess's journeys and relationships are vastly different, but the message for both couples is the same - the need to communicate and to share.

One of my favourite programmes on tv at the moment is Married at First Sight Australia it's insane! so when I saw the title to this book I thought same kind of idea, it should be good..

Hannah and Jess have been best friends for years, Jess has a husband, Tom, and twins and Hannah is single but yearning to settle down. Jess's business Save the Date, a dating app, isn't doing well so they decide to have a blind date wedding with Jess picking a husband for Hannah.

The story is good and the characters are well written but sadly it just didn't have any oomph for me and I wasn't gripped by it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK for the ARC