Oh my goodness, where do I start with this one? I’ve spent the most perfect couple of days surrounded by the warmth of the wonderful Donovan family, and when I finally found myself alone again I felt quite bereft – I entirely loved this book, and it’ll definitely be a contender as one of my books of the year. It’s not very often that I start a review like that, but I was mildly horrified to see a few distinctly lukewarm early reviews – I’m really not sure what those readers were expecting, but trust me, I felt it more than delivered on its promises at every possible level.

There is a large central cast – five sisters and their Irish Italian parents, plus all their various partners and family members. While the main focus may be on Emma and Connor and their involvement with the compatibility project – marrying someone you’ve never met – the book also follows all their individual stories, and that (for me, at least) lifted the book into a whole different “romcom-plus” category.

Bridget (the Young One) works on the project for the horrendous Professor Cole, alongside the wonderful Connor (who I loved from our very first introduction): she’s been engaged to Paolo forever, Connor knows he has no hope of ever winning her heart, and as her marriage draws nearer resigns himself to the fact that he’ll never be more than her closest friend. Her twin, Annie, is married and lives in New York – distance proves no obstacle to keeping in touch, but her sisters feel there’s something not quite right within her marriage. Orla’s the one with the family of her own, a touch stifled by it all, making a bit of a bid for freedom: Sofia and husband Moses run the New Life church, and she’d give anything to have a family.

Then there’s Emma (the Old One) – firmly on the shelf to the consternation of her mother Gabriella (who is perhaps the best character in the entire book…), running a successful cake making business, supremely organised and capable, but believing that true happiness can only come by finding a partner of her own. And the family’s completed by father Bear (maybe the second best character in the book…), who gives the very best hugs and sage advice, but struggles with the debilitating impact of ME.

The central premise – the marriage at first sight and everything that comes after – is superbly handled, and that story is threaded through all the twists and turns of everyone else’s lives. The voices of the book are Emma and Connor – both tremendously endearing as you share their inner thoughts and emotions, and yearn for them both to find whatever happiness they can. But more than anything else, this is a story about love and family – there’s a closeness, a fierce and precious love that warms your heart, that makes you wish it was a family you could be part of, that brings a tear to your eye on so many occasions. There are the compulsory sprawling Sunday lunches when Gabriella catches up with their lives (and shares her opinions – whether they want to hear them or not), the Wednesday wine nights when they catch up with each other – and, in between, there’s the Sister App where they share their thoughts (except for those times when they don’t). They might hurt each other at times, intervene and interfere when it’s not invited – but this is a family that loves and forgives, and one I’ll never forget.

This book made me cry at times, to want to leap in and be able to sort things out for them – but, as I couldn’t do that, I’d have been happy just to give a few of them a hug when they were hurting. And I’ve just realised I haven’t mentioned that the book is also extremely funny – if I was a “laugh out loud” person, I’d have done so many times as these very real people behaved as real people do. The book’s ending is perfect, emotional and perfectly judged, absolutely everything I’d hoped for – and the fact that neat bows aren’t tied on every single thread made it feel even more like a slice of real life than it already did. I’d love to spend more time with this wonderful family – if the author ever thinks of writing a sequel, I’ll be first in the queue.

As the book clearly wasn’t what some readers expected, I wondered if it would help if I made some “if you like x” comparisons. My first thought was Marian Keyes – and yes, I thought this book really was that good, with a very similar feel to her earlier writing. A touch Cathy Kelly maybe (although I haven’t read a book from her in years…), a bit Anna McPartlin (with added Italian touches…), maybe a bit Mhairi McFarlane in the romantic parts? But Beth Moran has a style and presentation all of her own – I really loved this book, and recommend it most highly.

This book started out in a way that totally had me reading as quickly as I could to find out what would happen. I really connected to the main character Emma, as I am also the oldest and two of my younger siblings are either married or engaged and here I am with no prospects in sight. I also kind of wish there was a real matching experiment like this that I could sign up for.

It took a bit longer than I would have liked for what I thought would be the meet-cute, even though we did have one that wasn’t it, since we know from the synopsis who Emma is going to be matched up with.

There was so much going on in this story. With all the other sisters, I wondered if there had been books for them in the past and I had missed those. But since all the couples had things going on, it seemed that I hadn’t. While I liked the story for the most part, I did have a few issues. First, when we got Cooper’s chapters, it was done in third person instead of first person like Emma’s chapters. I don’t know that I was a fan of that. Secondly, I kind of think there was a lot going on in the story, sometimes things I didn’t necessarily want to read as I was really invested in Emma’s story and how it would go. And finally, the ending. It wasn’t what I had really thought would happen after reading as far as I did, and from the synopsis. Now, I wondered at a few points toward the beginning if that could be an issue, but just figured it wouldn’t be.

A good story, but don’t go in expecting you’ll know what will happen. It’s not necessarily a sweet romance, but it’s also not really got any steamy bits either. In the end I do feel it was a little long as well.

Being the eldest of five sisters, Emma is the only one ‘left on the shelf’. So as a last ditch effort to find love she agrees to take part in her sister, Bridget’s, work experiment to marry someone at first sight.  The only trouble with that is the man that has been chosen to participate is actually in love with Bridget. 

I really enjoyed the relationship of the sisters in this book. And the message that finding yourself and love doesn’t always mean you need to be in a relationship.

3☆ A Romantic Saga 

When I first read the blurb for this book I was really excited, but unfortunately it didn't quiet hit the spot for me. 

Firstly at the very start of the book it geared up to be an interesting and funny read.
But then I got introduced to a whole host of characters all at once, and from that point it felt like I was dropped into the middle of a story. 

There was far too many characters and sub stories running alongside, that it was difficult to keep track with who, was who, without keep going back and checking which isn't easy when your reading on your mobile kindle app. 

I loved the idea of a large family of sisters but I think the plots got tangled up too much, I think there should of been one main story and kept the others for a different time as the sisters certainly were an interesting bunch. 

That said, the characters were written well, the storyline had lots of potential.
I was definitely intrigued by the idea of taking part in an experiment to decided your fate in love, it was certainly different. Overall a good read just wasn't my favourite. I will however definitely give this Authors other books a try.

I really enjoyed this lovely book about Emma who had 4 younger sisters who are all married and her mother died not know what is wrong with her and why she doesn't want to get married. She agrees to doing a compatibility test and possibly getting married at first sight what could possibly go wrong lol

I wanted to read this novel as it sounded like a great concept as who would not be intrigued by a blind date marriage. There is a reason why shows like Married at First Sight and 90 Days Fiancé (a show mentioned in the book) are extremely popular as people want to believe that love can work even if you don’t know each other well, or at all. (There is the other portion of viewers that want to watch the train wreck, but that is not who I am thinking of when I am making this comparison.) Both our main characters are down on their luck in love for different reasons, so they each want to take a chance to see if love, at first sight, can work for them. Take a Chance on me had amazing potential, but, unfortunately, it fell short, for me.

Our “main” character is Emma Donovan, a 37-year-old, single, owner of her own bakery. She is the oldest of five daughters in her Italian-Irish family. Three of them are already married and one of them just got engaged, leaving Emma as the lone single one. She initially is okay with the idea of staying single, but she changes her mind and decides to participate in an experiment called the Compatibility Project that her newly engaged sister just happens to be working on. Emma agrees to it and keeps an open mind knowing that it might not work out perfectly considering she will be getting married to a person that she’s never met before or knows anything about.

She is “matched” with Patrick Cooper, another scientist initially involved in the Compatibility Project. He is tired of living in a world of being in a love with someone who is already with someone else and decides it is time to force him to move on. This concept sounded great to me until you see that he has been in love with Bridget the entire time. Cooper automatically became a character I did not like or care for the moment he agreed to marry Emma while still having feelings for Bridget. It was wrong to me on so many levels and it was a very hard thing to get behind and just did not sit well for me as I tried my best to enjoy any other part of the story. His feelings for Bridget, while he tries to make it work with his blind-date marriage to Emma, was unnecessary to me as he knowingly involved himself in this mess and just used Emma, a member of a family he likes, for his own selfish gain to try and prove that he can move on from his unexpressed love for Bridget. For me, I understand why an author might want to create this type of drama/suspense for how the story will go, but it seemed just cruel to make it between two extremely close sisters rather than friends or co-workers or any other pair that is not a tightknit family.

We get some glimpses into the two of them after they are married, but the majority of the novel actually focuses on Emma’s family where there are a ton of characters to keep track of. Each sister has their own subplot and it is all told in almost as much detail as the main story. Although it was not impossible to keep up with the voluminous number of characters, it was difficult to become invested in their individual stories. I would have preferred more time dedicated to many of her sisters and what they were going through in their own lives. There was a lot happening and at times you aren’t allowed to become invested in a certain story before the plot moves along to discuss another character. As Emma spends a lot of time either directly talking to or about her family, the plotlines for each sister compete to become the one that the reader wants to focus on. Although I absolutely loved each sister’s story, I would have preferred more time dedicated to our main story about Emma with the sisters in the background as supporting characters, and then there are sequels where the time and energy can be focused on them like, I believe, they each deserve.

The points of view switch between Cooper and Emma. As Cooper features mainly himself, with his friend and roommate Ben, there is a lot of writing dedicated to him during his portions of the story, unless he was interacting with the Donovan family. When the writing changes back over to Emma, she becomes lost at times and it feels unfair to her as a character as her family’s subplots take over her pages. I really enjoyed Emma as a character and wanted to learn more about her, which is why it was disappointing at times when she became lost in the shuffle.

Overall, I loved the writing itself as it was relatable word choices and entertaining. In order to not spoil the story, I won’t discuss the rest of the story. I know some readers who saw the ending coming and others that did not. I was one that saw it coming and had zero doubts in my mind. I would suggest reading this novel for the reader to form their own opinions as they may like the parts that I disliked. I enjoyed the author and I am open to reading more from her, but this story just was a miss for me and one that I can’t picture myself ever rereading. The concept was fabulous, but the execution did not align with my expectations. I agree with some concepts that happen to some characters and highly disagree with others that occur. Again, I would suggest anyone curious about the novel to read it for them to (1) find out if Cooper and Emma follow through with the marriage and how their story turns out and (2) to form their own opinions about the aspects that I either liked or did not like.

**I give a special thank you to NetGalley, Boldwood Books, and the author, Beth Moran for the ARC to read and review. The opinions expressed are completely my own.**

If you like multitask-reading then this is the book for you. While I enjoyed the writing I couldn't seem to keep all the sisters and all the stories straight. Add Cooper to the mix and it gets even stickier. A fun but exhausting read. Almost felt at times I needed a family tree cheat sheet. 
I received an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley for my honest review.

This was a bit of a slow burner for me.
The first 80 or so pages, there is a lot of characters to get your heads around and I struggled with remembering who was who and who was married to who!
But.. When I got my head around it the book got better and better as it progressed. By the end I couldn't turn the pages quick enough. I loved the main characters although there was a lot of them, I loved Ben and Cooper and then Emma and Bridget. Their mamma is definitely one not to argue with though!
This was an interesting story as it touches upon the condition M.E too. Overall this is a good book I would be happy to recommend
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers and the author for the privilege to read this book for my honest opinion

Couldn’t get into this one unfortunately- was meant to be on the blog tour but pulled out (with lots of notice) sorry!

The cover is what drew me to this book straight away. While it didn’t quite meet me at the top, i did enjoy it overall. While there were a lot of characters (sisters and husbands) to remember, I found I did manage about halfway through to remember who everyone was. I loved Emma’s character until the end when I thought she could of handled the situation better. The ending seemed to pick up so much speed I was left wanting more. I haven’t read any of Beth Moran’s books before but I will look her up to see what else she has written.

Not What You Expected, But What You Need. As is often my norm when getting ready to write reviews, I had a look through the existing ones first. And so many were so critical of this book claiming it was effectively a bait and switch and had too many characters. 

Now, I'm a man that can have and has had a dozen different books going, and can easily track what is happening in all of them. I've compared my (Autistic) mind to an AEGIS threat detection and tracking system before - able to track *far* more things than most can even readily know is happening. I also happen to be the child of two people who each have more siblings than our lead female does here, so again, I'm used to large families and tracking everything. But yes, if your mind is smaller in scale and can't cope with a dozen ish important characters... you're going to struggle with this tale.  For me, this was actually fairly normal and I thought the dynamics were very solidly portrayed, with no characters feeling unduly flat, other than perhaps the children that were only in a scene or two. (And even then, within those scenes the children in question felt quite alive.)

As to the "bait and switch" of "claiming to be a romance" and actually presenting a "women's fiction"... The timing for me was actually quite interesting, as in a prominent multi-author book group on Facebook, one of the founding authors asked *just yesterday* what kind of endings people preferred. Of 416 responses across 8 options, with multiple selections allowed per voter, over 2/3 of the respondents to this particular (18 hr old at the time of this writing) poll responded with some form of "surprise me (174) / give me something to think about (75) / messy endings are fine (17) / pull lots of threads together (15)". So at least in this particular group of readers, I honestly think most of them would be along the lines of how I personally felt about this: YES, if you are an RWA purist, this book will NOT fit all of the RWA rules for "romance". If you argue (as I do) that Nicholas Sparks writes romances that are often *far* more emotional and loving than many RWA-pure romances and thus should be considered romances themselves... you'll be fine here. (Though note: This is NOT a tragedy ala Sparks, but that is as close as I get to revealing anything here.) Further, examining the description and even genres listed by the publisher on Amazon, I find no evidence of them claiming this is a romance novel. Instead, the marketing tagline is that you will get a "life-affirming and uplifting tale of love, family, friendship, and risking it all for happiness".

I would argue that the tagline given is *exactly* the book we ultimately get, and thus any claims of being led to expect one thing and being given something else (aka "bait and switch") are ultimately baseless and indeed utterly absurd.

For me, this book was a very solid, very fun tale with aspects not seen in many other places, including struggles with childlessness, fostering, different takes on what it means to be married/ have a happy marriage, and even, yes, its central premise and ultimate resolution thereof. For me, this was a book that completely worked from top to bottom, and enough that I personally will be on the look for future books from this author. Which means that, of course, this book is very much recommended.

I have read and enjoyed previous books by Beth Moran but sadly I struggled to get into this book.
There were a lot of Sisters, and apart from Emma, the protagonist I had difficulties remembering who the different Sisters were as well as their Husbands. I could not warm to Cooper, I didn't like his character much.
The book was not as lighthearted and feel-good as I expected but it was not a serious book  either. It did have a few parts that I enjoyed, it wasn't completely bad, it's okay, but I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I thought that I would.

Would you let a computer pick your husband? That seems to be the new Rage for women today!
Emma Donovan had it ingrained from childhood that a woman had to marry and have babies. That is what fulfilled her mother and two of her youngest siblings. Then to top it off her baby sister was now engaged! So, her mother while not domineering, but she was persistent! Emma signed up for her sisters dating program,. Bridget, her sister had a working relationship with Patrick Cooper and he decided that he was going to sIgn up as well and fix it so the two would be matched because there were secrets in this office!

The book has definite funny moments, but there were areas that seemed not to have enough life. I think the book needed more moments of cohesiveness in them. Overall, I loved the characters and wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel with Emma! 

I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley and these are my willingly given thoughts and opinions.

This was an unusual plot which was quite refreshing.
I am a big fan of First Dates and that genre of styles so I did like the premise.
I did find the amount of characters quite confusing and had to keep searching who was who🙈. 
A lovely romance which made me smile a lot

This book is about a guy Cooper who has loved a certain someone for most of his life but is aware she is promised to another. At an awards evening an unexpected meeting brings with it a new job opportunity. This is both wonderful and difficult at the same time due to working side by side with the love of his life. Their first study together is to match individuals with there perfect match. Sounds easy doesn’t it. However not is all it seems and this in itself opens a huge can of worms.

Thank you to the author, Boldwood Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The cover and the premise of this book were enough for me to apply for an ARC - and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I loved the close family bond, and the relationship between the sisters. While I don't condone the thinking of "having" to find a husband to feel a sense of self-worth, the author gave enough backstory so it was understandable why the main character, Emma, would feel that way. Not to mention the influence of a truly cringeworthy mother - we've all met people who exude that vibe - who would drive anyone to desperate measures. The only quibble I had was with the male lead, and why on earth he would accede to this plan (marrying the sister of the woman he's been in love with for forever, sight unseen, as part of a "scientific experiment"). This does not go well, but the ending is satisfying without being pat.

*2.5 
This book had such a confusing plot. I could not tell who the main character was because honestly there were about 10 characters that all took up the same space in the storyline. It follows the story of Emma who has been unsuccessful in the dating world. She agrees to be part of a compatibility project to get married at first sight. HER SISTER MATCHES HER UP WITH HER BEST FRIEND COOPER. Already, I knew where this was going, and oh man. I was ready for watching two strangers fall in love and some angst, but it never happened. I loved the idea of this book of marriage at first sight and the writing was good. But, the plot and character development just did not do it for me. I would be interested in reading more of Beth Moran's books tho. 

*Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Emma is 37 and she is the oldest of five daughters in a nice Italian Irish family and decides to solve the lack of lovefife with the help of computer science a program will find her perfect maths THE ONE . 
This book in nice and well written and if Emma will find her path is to you to discover reading the book. 
Nevertheless I have to say that sub plots are too much there is a crowd there .,, too much I nearly took notes to follow the story 
 Take a Chance on Me by Beth Moran. #TakeaChanceonMe #NetGalley 
[NetGalley URL]

This was an exciting fun read that kept me on my toes the whole time. The author’s depiction of the characters was spot on and the plot had me breathless and kept me turning the page long into the night! A great read!

This was an enjoyable read and I did enjoy getting to know the different characters, particularly the 4 sisters who were all so different. It was easy to read, humorous at times and I found myself wanting more at the end. I wonder if a follow up story is on the cards....? If you’re looking for an easy to read, romantic and feel good story, then this is for you.