Miss Match

A middle grade story for young entrepreneurs, Miss Match by Susan Hughes is a page turner and part of the Orca Currents series of books.

Polly wants to be an entrepreneur just like her mom. When she comes up with the best idea for a new business, a matchmaking service, she is very excited. She enlists her friends and very quickly finds herself over her head and reluctant to ask for help. Will this business venture be a success?

Susan Hughes perfectly captures the middle school experience in this clever story. I absolutely love Polly and her friends and the story made me reflect back to my time in grade seven and eight and all of the crazy ideas and feelings that came up then. I have a number of middle schoolers in my life and this story felt very authentic to their experiences and is highly engaging. 

I really love how this story explores first crushes and end of school dances and all the things that feel so important in middle school. The anxious feelings are so palpable through the text. Susan Hughes does impeccable work diving into the minds of her readers and pulling out all of the small things that get bigger and bigger the more they are ignored. I could very much relate to Polly and the way she was handling the stress but she is a much braver character than I am person when it comes to the end.

I LOVE the Orca Currents series of books that have more mature content while keeping the reading level lower so that readers can access highly appealing stories even if their reading skills are still developing. Many readers who were in kindergarten in 2020 are now approaching middle school and many are reading below grade level having missed those fundamental building blocks back in kindergarten so books like these are going to be increasingly more important in libraries and schools.