the heart wants what the heart wants

Lexie has worked hard to create a normal life for herself. When she was 18, she’d changed her name. She went to college to get a psychology degree. And now she works as a professional matchmaker and she’s engaged to a doctor. But that starts to unravel at her birthday dinner, when Noah and Lexie’s best friend Molly announced that they were in love. Noah hadn’t even realized it was Lexie’s birthday. He just showed up at the dinner to let her know he was leaving her.

Lexie was upset, but she truly believed that it was temporary. She thought they would work it out, get back together, and get married. But then she got a special delivery at her townhouse, a human heart in a box. Immediately she thought it was Noah’s, as he’d been missing. Molly had stopped by to ask Lexie if she knew where he was, and his friends had started posting about his disappearance on social media. Lexie hadn’t known where he was, but she had a idea of who might have known.

As a matchmaker, Lexie worked with a specific subset of the population. As part of the original interview at the company where she worked, there were questions that would tease out traits of a psychopath. These clients were directed Lexie’s way.

There is a reason why Lexie had worked so hard to create a new, normal life for herself. And there is a reason that she finds love for psychopaths. When Lexie was a child, her parents were madly in love but terrible human beings, and her trauma lends her a special understanding of difficult people. But who would go so far as to kill her ex-fiance? Could it be Renee, her intense new client who is quickly becoming Lexie’s new best friend? Is it Adrian, the guy she hooked up on her birthday after she got dumped and drunk? Is it her mother, somehow making moves from prison? Or is it someone else she knows?

Matchmaking for Psychopaths is an unusual rom com, with lots of questionable characters. It’s said in the book that as many as 1 in 4 people could be psychopaths (a number I’ve heard before), but that ratio is even higher in this book. There are a lot of psychopaths in this story, and I’m not sure how prepared I was for that. I know, it’s right there in the title. Still, there is a lot of killing, and it got a little challenging for me after a while. But I did still enjoy this book. It’s a unique perspective on a typical rom com, and it is full of surprises. I can’t say this one is for everyone, but I am a psychology nerd who may listen to a true crime podcast or two, so I had a lot of fun with Matchmaking for Psychopaths.

Egalleys for Matchmaking for Psychopaths were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.