Thank you Netgalley for the arc of this upcoming book! This was a decent enough palette cleanser in between darker reads and grittier reads.

Pretty cute and very sweet story about childhood friends to lovers. Jia is an aspiring matchmaker and jaiman owns a local pub. They do take a frustratingly long time to have just one productive conversation. Is it perfect? No. Is it a cute, fluffy romance? For sure.

Unfortunately this book was not for me. I was going into this with high hopes and I was disappointed. It was very slow for me and not blown away. I do understand where the author was going with it but I was not blown away.

I am a huge Emma/Clueless fan and this was Clueless for the 21st Century and set in India. Jia is literality Cher Horowitz reincarnated. She is sassy, rich, way ditzy and full of herself but also kind, caring and just over the top fun. I love a book that has a match maker scheme in them and this was interesting because Clueless Jia wants to be a matchmaker.. Jia wants to set up friend, thinks she know who is perfect and is a little blinded by red flags and prestigious instead of really seeing what is there. Hilarity ensues and while growing up a little and realizing she may have more things to learn, she realizes she is in love with her childhood best friend. I swear there were so many scenes where all I could hear was Alicia Silverstone's voice as she said her iconic lines.
So was this story new and different, no. I didn't find the setting all that amazing. I know it takes place in Mumubi there was nothing that made me really feel a connection to the setting. Were the characters amazing or different, not really. JIa was super fun but I didn't feel a lot of feeling for Jaiman. The dual POV didn't work all that great for me. and I almost think it would have been better if we didn't know what he was thinking. I
I am saying 4 stars because half stars aren't option, but this is a solid 3 to 3 1/2 and I will be keeping my eye on this I am going to keep my eye this author. She has a young and easy writing style that make for great books. This was a really fun and easy book and made me want to watch Clueless for the millionth time.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I had a hard time finishing this book. I understand that the main character is supposed to be selfish, spoiled, and clueless about love (even though she deems herself an expert) since it is based off of Emma, but she was just hard to root for.

I did enjoy the setting and would pick up another book from Swati Hegde in the future.

4 ⭐️
This was such a cute story! At first I thought this was a miscommunication story, but turns out it was more repressed feelings and not really communicating.
I loved the culture aspects of the story, and definitely want to read more desi romances!
The FMC was referred to clueless a lot, and I thought that was very accurate description. I don’t think I would classify this as a rom-com, but it was a sweet story. I did think one thing was very predictable, but it’s a romance novel so why wouldn’t it be?

I definitely recommend if you like any of the below features:
🥀Friends to lovers
🥀Dual, 3rd person POV
🥀Writer/Bar Owner
🥀Slow burn
🥀Indian culture
🥀Mumbai
🥀Repressed feelings

This debut romance is a match for fans of Janet Austen’s Emma (with just a touch of You’ve Got Mail). Matchmaking Jia has a lot of grand plans, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test when one match to rule them all is what stands between her and success. As Jia puts her matchmaking plans into action, her longtime friend Jaiman watches and wishes for Jia to finally see that he could be her match.
This is a really enjoyable read! Jia and Jaiman are so cute - I think a great friendship is the foundation of a great relationship, and these two definitely have a solid friendship. And I do enjoy some good pining between characters. I think the matchmaking storyline is done well, and I love that we get blog excerpts that tie in to Jia’s own thoughts on romance and shows how those thoughts change. A great take on a classic storyline with lots of delightful updates and twists. I just wish it included a full recipe book of Jaiman’s cocktails!

the concept of this book was really cute and i LOVED the mmc, jaiman. he was so kind and vulnerable and just all around likeable. i really enjoyed watching him navigate his personal and professional life which entailed a lot of struggles. unfortunately, i hated the fmc, jia, for almost the entire book save for the last 10 pages. her character made the book unbearable at times. i don’t even know if i would classify what was going on as miscommunication… it was almost like purposely trying to see the wrong/negative side in every action? idk, that part was very annoying to me. i also hated how she tried to force charu and eshaan while forcing her to say no to manoj. like… why????? anyway, this was a cute story and a quick read, but i’m not sure i’d recommend it to my friends.

DNF & not sure why but the story did not grab me & make me want to finish. Gave up after a month, which is a first for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC review of Match Me if You Can in exchange for my review.

This was a delightful and entertaining read. Jia is a writer for a women’s magazine in India all about love and relationships, but she doest’t truly buy into the stories she writes, so she starts an anonymous blog on the side where she gives her real, unvarnished opinions.

She also dreams of working as a matchmaker for millennial clients, after having successfully found matches for her uncle and sister. She proposes a matchmaking column for the magazine and starts with a trial run for her new colleague Charru.

Though Jia gives Charu’s match her full attention, it turns out she has some blind spots and things don’t go quite how she wants them to.

In the end, other opportunities present themselves and Jia finds the confidence to make various changes in her life.

I felt that the ending wrapped up a little too neatly for my taste, but other than that, this was a very enjoyable read. I appreciated the touches of Indian culture mixed in with the plot and hope to read more by Swati Hedge!

I really struggled at times with Match Me if You Can. Jia was often very immature and made some really poor decisions because all could think about was herself. I liked Jaiman more, but he was very "woah is me". I enjoyed the Mumbai setting and the side characters.

Jia Deshpande writes cutesy articles for Mumbai’s top women’s magazine and posts about the messiness of real love on her anonymous blog. She's close to her family and childhood friend Jaiman Patil, whose family had moved away. He spends a lot of time with her family or the pub he owns. Jia must successfully play matchmaker for a coworker for a column to be authorized at the magazine. She sets up meet-cutes, but they go haywire, risking friendships and her relationship with Jaiman. Is love more complicated than she thought?

Jia and Jaiman had crushes on each other for years but pushed that away. Neither believes the other is truly interested romantically, and Jia wants the loving relationship her parents had before her mother died. She has two successful matchmaking attempts, so she's sure she can fix up her coworker. She is absolutely sure she can figure out what love is all about and what people need, but she misses cues and can't believe that she's wrong when it's pointed out to her. Jaiman is just as stubborn in a different way; his pub is failing and he won't let others help him. Both hit their low points with failures and continue to push through alone. It takes outside intervention to see what truly matters and stubbornness isn't it.

I enjoyed seeing the friendship and family relationships that Jaiman and Jia had since the romance affected others as well. Of course, everyone else saw the obvious, and it was not just a single miscommunication. The assumptions about each other and their real fear of losing their friendship made the stakes very real. The two also give a great look into the Mumbai of young singles, and the struggle to balance modern life with traditions, family expectations in Jaiman's case, and trying to have it all. We get an answer to the "will they or won't they" question, and a great happily ever after for everyone involved, not just our main couple. This is a fun rom-com, and worth the read.

Get ready to be swept away to the streets of Mumbai India. It was very cool to see and learn different things about the Indian culture.

This one was a closed door romance with only kisses. Jai the FMC was a bit hardheaded. She was given the chance to be a matchmaker, when things didn’t go exactly as planned… Jaiman her lifelong friend, who is literally perfect, has feelings for her. I do not know how Jai held out as long as she did with Jaiman. I was 100% rooting for them.

I love the wit and humor Swati Hedge wrote with, it was fun and inviting. The way she brought forth the cultures and traditions without it being overwhelming was such a nice touch. This book will warm your heart and have you yearning for one of Jaiman’s cocktails.

An enjoyable Desi romance with a slow burn. The characters are enjoyable, and the Mumbai setting is fun. I look forward to more from debut authSwati Hegde.This book is on shelves now. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing, for the ARC and opportunity to provide an honest review.

okay. okay. ive sat on it, and its a solid debut overall. it took be a while to get invested, particularly in the storyline rather than our characters/their romance, but once i did she was very cute indeed. the cast of characters were so fun to read about and provably some of the standout parts of this book, and id say overall i had a good time, but might’ve been looking for something more out of this

I have come to REALLY enjoy a desi romance, and this was no exception! Jia and Jaiman’s love story feels so special and lovely. A fun crazy story about matchmaking and (not so) unrequited love. I loved this one so so much.

This was good but so frustrating. If the two of them had just talked even once about the kiss they had a year ago most of their problems would have been solved. The end of the book when they were actually together was so cute and I wanted more of it. Since they talked about it a bit a bonus chapter of their wedding would have been perfect.

I received an arc through netgalley.

I have made it my prerogative to read books written by people of color, especially romance books because I feel like it riches my perspective on the romance genre, and I love matchmaking romances. This one was super well written and I would read it two or three times again because the characters were just so well developed and just iconic

Match Me if You Can is a charming contemporary romance with an essential commentary on the modern state of love. Readers can look forward to a sweet love story that is sure to be so relatable to so many. Author Swati Hegde succeeds in creating a romance that speaks to the state of dating in the modern world and how friendship and romance can interact for the better. Ultimately, this is a sweet story involving sweet characters that are magnetic from beginning to end.

Full review posted on Pages and Pictures.

This book had a cute concept but I don’t think it was for me. I felt like I read this book for so long but never made any actual progress. I also had trouble connecting with any of the characters and didn’t really care about any of them.