Book Review: The Matchmaker of Périgord

Book: The Matchmaker of Périgord by Julia Stuart

Cover Design by Helen Chapman
Cover Illustration by Mary Schuck

Edition: Paperback

Description:

The charming tale of a small French town in which the local barber, whose business is failing as his clients grow older and lose their hair, decides to become the town matchmaker.

Barber Guillaume Ladoucette has always enjoyed great success in his tiny village in southwestern France, catering to the tonsorial needs of Amour-sur-Belle's thirty-three inhabitants. But times have changed. His customers have grown older—and balder. Suddenly there is no longer a call for Guillaume's particular services, and he is forced to make a drastic career change. Since love and companionship are necessary commodities at any age, he becomes the town's official matchmaker and intends to unite hearts as ably as he once cut hair. But alas, Guillaume is not nearly as accomplished an agent of amour, as the disastrous results of his initial attempts amply prove, especially when it comes to arranging his own romantic future.

For every reader who adored Chocolat, Julia Stuart's The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delectable, utterly enchanting, and sinfully satisfying delight.





Rating: 5 stars

Review:

The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delightful character driven story set in the small French village Amour-sur-Belle, that follows the quirky villagers newfound interest in romance. And that's due to Guillaume Ladoucette's taking on a new career as a Matchmaker. Prior to that, he was a well-skilled barber running his own barber shop. However, despite running his successful business for years, things had started to change. When he wasn't dealing with his clients starting to lose their hair, he started losing clients to a new barber in another town who was offering trendy (yet ridiculous) haircuts, Guillaume made the decision to close his business. Not so long after he decided to start another business of being a Matchmaker and opening Heart's Desire. Despite the name of the town, Amour-sur-Belle doesn't seem to have a lot of romance, which gave him the idea to encourage more love and romance.

I found the entire idea to be interesting, because he looked at his town and saw that it was lacking something and felt he could help fix it. And yes, Guillaume certainly had his work cut out for him. With this being such a small town, people tend to know everyone and their secrets and rumors. And once he started getting clients he had an interesting task of trying to pair them up. These are his friends and neighbors and he wanted to get it right. But with him trying to find love for everyone else, what about himself? With the return of Émilie Fraisse, the woman Guillaume has been in love with for years (but unable to tell her), perhaps he might get his own chance at love.

What I loved about this story is that it's well-written, interesting, funny yet heartfelt with rich and complex characters that feel real yet have this quirkiness to them. For example, Guillaume and his good friend Stéphane Jollis have this sort of competition when they go fishing. The competition has nothing to do with fishing, their competition is all about food. They each bring a picnic basket full of home made food and then try to see who made the better feast. The story is also full of interesting details about not only the characters but the food, the town and more. There's also insight and point of view from so many different characters but not so many it's distracting. I also like that the story doesn't just talk about the characters' dates but makes of point of showing you some of them which at times didn't go so well. Yet the Matchmaker and his clients continued on with the quest of finding love.

One more thing about these characters before I end this review. These characters are very idiosyncratic and their personas are so unique to them and what I like is that you get to see their personality and quirks unfold throughout the story. And since this story is so focused on the characters, it's a good thing that they are so compelling and engaging which makes the story that much more interesting.