MATCH MAKING FOR BEGINNERS by Maddie Dawson & GIVEAWAY

I’ve enjoyed several of Maddie Dawson’s five novels, so I was excited to read her sixth and latest, MATCH MAKING FOR BEGINNERS (LakeUnionPublishing).

Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life— complete with ordinary things like a husband, kids, and a minivan with a sliding door, all in the suburbs. But sometimes, things end up happening differently than you planned.

Now that Marnie is marrying the man of her dreams, she believes she’s going to get the whole suburban package. But she didn’t plan on being left at the altar, then marrying the guy and experiencing two weeks of utter hell.

Marnie meets her soon to be ex-hubbie’s great aunt, Blix at the wedding. Once she’s divorced, Blix goes and dies, but leaves Marnie her Brooklyn brownstone in her estate. Along with the brownstone comes a building full of unique characters all trying to find their way in life. But amongst, those lonely hearts, is one Blix knew was just perfect for Marnie.

And Blix was also right about some things Marnie must learn the hard way: love is not always easy to recognize, and the ones who push love away often are the ones who need it most.

*****

Maddie’s words:

I grew up in the South, born into a family of outrageous storytellers—the kind of storytellers who would sit on the dock by the lake in the evening and claim that everything they say is THE absolute truth, like, stack-of-Bibles true. The more outlandish the story, the more it likely it was to be true. Or so they said.

You want examples? There was the story of my great great aunt who shot her husband dead, thinking he was a burglar; the alligator that almost ate Uncle Jake while he was waterskiing; the gay cousin who took his aunt to the prom, disguised in a bouffant French wig. (The aunt, not the cousin.) And then there was my mama, a blond-haired siren who, when I was seven, drove a married man so insane that he actually stole an Air Force plane one day and buzzed our house. (I think there might have been a court-martial ending to that story.)

And in between all these stories of crazy, over-the-top events, there was the hum of just daily, routine crazy: shotgun weddings, drunken funerals, stories of people’s affairs and love lives, their job losses, the things that made them laugh, the way they’d drink Jack Daniels and get drunk and foretell the future. There were ghosts and miracles and dead people coming back to life. You know, everyday stuff.

How could I turn into anything else but a writer?

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and Lake Union Publishing, we have two copies of MATCH MAKING FOR BEGINNERS. Just tell us if you were ever fixed up and how it went. We’ll announce a winner soon. Good luck.

GIVEAWAY: USA only, please.