(6.)Arranged by Catherine McKenzie

Arranged 

by Catherine McKenzie

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Publication Date: May 15, 2012

Pages: 416

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Anne Blythe is a thirty-three year old woman who just went through another rough break up.  She is nursing her wounds when her best friend announces her engagement and Anne feels like even more of a relationship failure.  In a moment of fate Anne discovers a business card that leads her to Blythe and Co.  Anne assumes it is a dating service, but it is during her first consultation that she discovers they arrange marriages, not dates.

Anne is so exhausted by the dating scene and continuously getting hurt that she decides to go through with the sessions with the hopes that Blythe and Co really will be able to find the perfect match for her. They choose writer Jack Harper to be her husband and after their week in paradise she decides that they got it right.  They have a lot in common and the chemistry between them is hard to deny.  They return home married and ready to start their life together.  They are a few months into their marriage when Anne has to leave for a business trip.  She returns home a day early, hoping to surprise Jack. Instead she finds his unfinished manuscript, which Anne cannot resist reading. What she reads shatters her to the core and she realizes that the last few months have been a complete sham.  Will her marriage to Jack survive the book he has written?

Arranged was suuuuuuuch a good book! It was as if the author took bits and pieces of my life and created Anne.  Now, I never had an arranged marriage, but I was a single thirty-three year old woman  (I got married at age 34) who had gone through break up after break up. I can relate to that exhaustive feeling of being DONE with the dating world.  I am sure that I am not the only woman, single or otherwise who has had those feelings at some point in their life. I got lucky. One of my past breakups came back into my life and made me the happiest woman on the planet.  I know how lucky I am and I thank God everyday.  - Anyway, I loved this book.  I loved all of the characters, from Anne to her best friend, to her relationship with her brother, and even the stuffy shrink provided by Blythe and Co. They are all unique, yet familiar.  If that make sense.

Bottom line, I gave Arranged a "Best of 2013" tag because I cried like a baby through the last fifty pages, and as you may know, that is one of my criteria for "Best of" - the emotions the novel evokes from me. I enjoyed everything about this  novel from start to finish.  If you are looking for a good, engrossing novel you must check out Arranged. Let me know what you think.