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Experiments in Offline Dating: A Novel by Kat McKenzie

$18.99 USD

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Enemies-to-lovers rom-com • podcast host FMC • Ireland matchmaking festival • road trip romance • grumpy sheep farmer/driver MMC • forced proximity • banter + chemistry • travel escape read

Perfect for readers of:

Enemies-to-lovers with nonstop banter and slow-burn payoff
Travel rom-coms set in Ireland (matchmaking festivals, countryside, road trips)
Grumpy heroes who are secretly soft (and secretly obsessed)
“This is for the podcast” dating chaos with real feelings sneaking in

This title will be released on August 25, 2026.

Spice: 3/5

“Delicious tension” rom-com heat—more chemistry and buildup than super explicit (based on blurb tone).

The vibe

Maya Davis is spectacularly bad at dating—so bad she turned it into a career. As cohost of the podcast A Spinster’s Guide to Offline Dating, she’s made a full-time job out of awkward first dates and hilarious romantic disasters. Falling in love, though? That’s a whole different experiment.

For the sake of the show, Maya heads to Ireland to meet a famous local matchmaker and dive into the town’s matchmaking festival—where she’s promptly set up on a string of catastrophically funny meet-ups with random Irishmen. Including one memorably terrible blind date with a handsome but incredibly surly sheep farmer named Tadhg.

Then the matchmaker proposes a bigger plan: a road trip across Ireland, going on dates and interviewing couples along the way. Maya shows up expecting the jolly older matchmaker as her guide… and instead gets a last-minute switch: Tadhg is her driver.

He’s outrageously grumpy. He’s clearly not thrilled. And as they cross green countryside and postcard-perfect landscapes, their constant verbal sparring starts to feel like cover for something else entirely—because the chemistry is getting harder to deny, and Maya begins to suspect she judged Tadhg’s brooding exterior way too quickly.

Tropes & tags

Enemies to lovers
Forced proximity (road trip + driver)
Grumpy hero
Travel romance (Ireland)
Matchmaking festival / dating “experiments”
Banter-heavy rom-com
Podcaster FMC / “doing it for content” premise

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