Publication Date: August 25, 2026
A sharp-witted enemies-to-lovers romcom about a podcaster who embarks on a matchmaking tour of Ireland and gets trapped with a grump who pushes all of her buttons.
Maya Davis is chronically terrible at dating. So much so that she’s turned her catastrophic dating experiments into a full-time job. Hellbent on dating “offline” for her second podcast season, Maya travels to Ireland to meet the world-renowned local matchmaker, and gets set up on a slew of horribly funny meet-ups that are exactly the type of comedy gold she was looking for.
At the town’s annual Matchmaking Festival, Maya wins a blind date with a surly local sheep farmer. But while she’s had every bad date in the book, nothing could have prepared her for the apocalyptic, full-body-cringe that is the worst date of her life!
All she wants to do is forget it ever happened, but when the mischievous matchmaker talks her into a whirlwind dating adventure, he fails to mention that it’s with the one person in Ireland that she just can’t stand – her blind date catastrophe!
Trapped together, Maya and Tadhg journey across picturesque landscapes and green countryside until their constant verbal sparring feels increasingly like chemistry. And the more time they spend together, the more Maya begins to wonder if perhaps she’s not so catastrophic at love after all.
Brimming with humor and delicious tension, this heartfelt travel romance is the perfect escape!
Tropes:
- Enemies to lovers
- Forced proximity
- Grumpy hero
A spinster might have been an accepted term for an unmarried woman a few centuries ago, but it seems to often have a negative connotation in today’s world.
However, podcaster Maya Davis proudly uses the term in her show’s title as a way to describe her love life. Author Kat Mackenzie serves up a side-splitting romantic comedy in Experiments in Offline Dating.
Maya’s ongoing experiment in the world of love and dating takes a new twist thanks to her plan to visit a matchmaker in Ireland. In fact, Maya has a tendency to have the most cringeworthy conversations, as illustrated by her examples from her failed online dating attempts.
When she crosses paths with Tadhg at the Matchmaker Festival and completely misunderstands rudeness for flirtatious banter, it elevates the storyline into “laugh out loud” territory.
Maya’s search for love puts her in front of many unsuitable possibilities, but it reinforces her decision when the right one comes along.
Experiments in Offline Dating proves that love is possible, even for a self-proclaimed cat lady.
Kat Mackenzie is an American who just happened to find herself living abroad for ten years and accidentally traveling to over forty countries in an attempt to taste all the food. She holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford but has discovered that they serve her best collecting dust on the shelf while she pens comedy-forward stories about women who travel. Work in Progress is her first novel.
