MATCH4LOVE
From Zero to Find Your Hero: Stories of Love Begging, Disappointment and Success
Friends looking for love fail time and again, but are always able to depend on each other, in the heartwarming novel MATCH4LOVE.
In Jorge Dyszel’s humorous novel MATCH4LOVE, serial daters endure the vagaries of online dating and grow closer as friends.
Online dating always seems to go wrong for Meli, who is either ghosted or outright scammed. Leiva, her best friend, is a bit rough around the edges and a hopeless romantic at his core. The two keep returning to their apps in the hopes of finding their soulmates. Meli falls too easily for fast-talking guys, overlooking their red flags; Leiva flat-out misses the clear signs of scams. They lean on each other for moral support—and, in Leiva’s case, for financial support when Meli funds his escape from an unsettling date.
This is an episodic novel with a loose narrative arc, made up of scenes covering, for instance, Meli’s romantic trip to Florida and Leiva’s Cuban date. Each anecdote is too brief, though; there’s little development beyond the recurring theme of dates ending in inevitable heartbreak. Some episodes are limited to phone conversations or rapid-fire text exchanges between Meli and Leiva; others are more active. Sensory details are rare but stand out, as when Meli describes Leiva’s attempt at confident walking as if he “was dribbling a soccer ball and stompin’ on eggs at the same time.”
Meli’s and Leiva’s voices sound quite similar. They rely on colloquialisms and internet slang, and their exchanges are often shallow as a result, as when Leiva sends a lengthy series of “hahaha”s Meli’s way, or with uses of “idk.” Other people’s voices are distracting, too, as with a Cuban hairstylist who ends and starts every word with an extraneous L.
The duo’s failed attempts to find love on various dating sites become wearying as the novel continues—in particular because neither character seems to grow as a result of their mishaps. They miss the signs of potential catfishing; they wind up feeling stuck again and again. Some excitement is generated around the beginnings of their potential relationships: Meli’s voice becomes sex-charged, and Leiva is quick to show affection to would-be partners. But such hope diminishes as the book progresses, and the two fall back on each other each time. Even with new dates on the horizon, they often repeat their mistakes despite knowing better. The book concludes with a flash-forward several years, but there’s not a clear enough sense of how they got there, beyond implications that they avoided pitfalls and became better versions of themselves. This reassuring ending jars with the ample examples of romantic failures that preceded it, though; its suggestions of Meli’s and Leiva’s growth strain credulity.
MATCH4LOVE is a lighthearted novel about two friends’ dating mishaps.
Reviewed by
John M. Murray
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
