A light-hearted chicklit that neither strains your brain nor insults your intelligence.

Sure, they Meet Cute (she’s wearing a fish costume and about the be struck down by a runaway gelato cart), sparks fly, there’s The Misunderstanding (she’s misinformed about his sexual orientation), the Slow Build (complicated by The Misunderstanding), followed by the Big Reveal, the Hot Monkey Sex, and The Menace to It All, which has to be defeated before the Happy Ever After.

That’s all formulaic stuff, but Brandt’s light hand and a heroine who’s not a ditz – a little klutzy, yes, and a bit slow on the uptake, lift this one above the average for the genre.

Heroine Savannah Taylor is a bit of an anal-compulsive, planning her wedding to Mr. Obviously Not Right with the care and precision of a Moon shot, only to have her big day ruined by a pesky arrest warrant ending in cuffs around the wrist rather than a ring on the finger. It gets cleared up – her identity has been stolen, and those unpaid bills and questionable financial dealings aren’t hers at all – but not until Mr. ONR has decided she’s too much trouble for wife material. She decides the answer to her broken heart and oh-so-boring accountant job is to take off for Florida and run down the woman who stole her identity and ruined her life, and maybe kick up her heels a bit along the way.

To support herself while she’s chasing down her nemesis, Savannah takes a number of unsatisfying jobs (see fish costume, above), rents a room in a sleepy motel suddenly overrun with spring-break college students, and ultimately goes back to boring old accounting where – in a roaring coincidence that actually turns out to be less coincidental than one might think – she finds her identity thief, which is when things begin to get way too real for comfort.

Okay, the ending doesn’t bear a whole lot of real close examination. What do you want – great literature?

Just crank up the tunes, slather on some sunscreen, pour yourself an umbrella drink, and enjoy. ( )

Huh. I'm completely distracted now, because I went to look at the Amazon reviews, and found one complaining about "the ending scenes that involved the musician from Meat Loaf's band." So I just went and re-read the last couple chapters. Nope, no musician from Meat Loaf's band in there--in fact, no musicians at all. These are things that bug me.

Anyway. Beverly Brandt and Jacey Ford are overlapping here, and I should have read Match Game before Dead Heat. I did have it before, but Match Game got buried in the TBR pile. Sam from Dead Heat is the brother of Mike in Match Game, and their mother Lillian and her company, Rules of Engagement, figure prominently in both books.

Accountant Savannah Taylor's wedding is interrupted... when she's arrested by the FBI for fraud and money laundering. It turns out it's a case of identity theft, but her fiance decides she's not worth the trouble of rescheduling the wedding.

All this makes Savannah reevaluate her life, especially when she looks at the bills the fake "Vanna" rang up--her alter ego was living a much more exciting life than hers.

So she quits her job, and goes to Naples, Florida, where the fraudulent charges were made, with the dual goal of finding the thief and reinventing herself.

She looks for a new, more glamorous job, and follows the advice in magazines to try to change herself into someone who's sexier and more exciting. Along the way, she meets a group of rowdy spring-breakers staying at the same motel, and a sexy but apparently gay man who rescues her... twice.

Savannah is written with a lot of warmth and compassion. It's easy to relate to her reacting to the arrest and desertion by trying to reinvent herself, and I share her penchant for taking quizzes.

For his part, Mike is a federal air marshal, who sees too much of the bad side of people in his job, and is a bit too serious and responsible for his own good.

They both get what they need, but Match Game is primarily Savannah's story. The ending is action-packed and satisfying... and musician-free. ( )

From BackCover:
Who is Savannah Taylor really?

On the most special day of Savannah's life, her wedding day, the cops bust in and wrongfully arrest her at the altar for money laundering and tax evasion. Instead of a ring, Savannah leaves the church in handcuffs. She's soon released because she proves to the Feds that someone stole her identity—but her fiancé isn't as easily convinced, and hits the road.

Savannah's botched wedding was an awakening. She needed everything to fall apart to start anew—with a totally new attitude. Savannah takes off to find her identity thief—and maybe the answer to all her problems—in a wild journey of love, risk, and surprises. ( )