cover image MATCHBOOK: The Diary of a Modern-Day Matchmaker

MATCHBOOK: The Diary of a Modern-Day Matchmaker

Samantha Daniels, . . Simon & Schuster, $23 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-6953-7

If Daniels, reportedly the inspiration for NBC's (short-lived) series Miss Match, had written her memoir as a novel, it might have been considered deliciously wicked, a sort of Nanny Diaries for the singles world. Unfortunately, Daniels comes across as a snobby junior high school alpha girl: "How am I supposed to become a married Matchmaker when all I meet are pigs and losers?" Daniels has made close to 50 matches in the five years since she quit being a divorce attorney and went into business fixing up people she describes as "the cream of the singles crop" in New York City. But while she jokingly refers to herself as "Desperado #1," the apparent shallowness and lack of empathy on display are unnerving: she offers up often cruel critiques of the composite "Desperados" upon whom she bestows such nicknames as Miss Manhunt, the Troll and the Hundred Thousand Dollar Man (the bonus he has promised should she find him a wife). Upon meeting "Miss Boobs," a woman who is "oddly self conscious about her looks," Daniels's first thought is "What a rack!" Occasionally the matchmaker shows she has a human heart, sending Miss Interrupter to a therapist to work through why she thinks she can never get a word in edgewise. But readers may have lost heart themselves before they find that out. Agent, Dan Strone. (Feb. 4)