And Then There Was You by Sophie Cousens
Stuck in a Production Assistant job and living at home with her parents after a painful breakup, thirty-one-year-old Chloe Fairway isn’t where she wants to be in life. The last thing she needs is to face the people who once voted her "most likely to succeed" at her upcoming ten-year college reunion. And she definitely doesn’t want to see her former best friend, Sean Adler, who is now a hotshot film director living the life Chloe dreamed of. Desperate to make a splash—and to save face in front of the man who might be the one that got away—she turns to a mysterious dating service.
Enter Rob, her handsome, well-read, and charming match, the perfect plus-one to take to her reunion. The more she gets to know him, the more perfect he appears to be. Could it be that this dating service knows her better than she knows herself? And can she overlook the one big catch? As Chloe reconnects with old friends, she begins to question everything she thought she wanted. Maybe, just maybe, revisiting the past is exactly what she needs to move forward.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Chloe is apprehensive to attend her ten-year college reunion with what she feels is little to show for the past decade. She's in a dead-end job, lives at home with her parents, just went through a breakup, and hasn't written anything in years. When she stumbles upon a unique match-making service, she thinks maybe this is the perfect solution to facing people at her reunion, including her former best friend Sean Adler who is now a bigtime film director. There's just one major catch with the seemingly perfect man the dating service sets her up with.
It's hard to review this book without giving away any spoilers! Suffice it to say, there is a big AI plotline in here, which does require some suspension of disbelief. While most of Cousens' books are straight-forward rom coms, this one fell more in line with The Good Part, which included a 13 going on 30 plotline. Similarly, this one requires some suspension of disbelief to buy into the AI technology she has imagined. This was a daring move, and I know a lot of people are not going to like it, but it mostly worked for me!
What I appreciated the most about the AI plotline is that ultimately it is a resounding argument for real human connection. As the author says in the author's note: "we can learn so much from people who are different from us, not just from those who simply reflect back to us what we already think and know." No computer-generated program, no matter how perfect, can replicate the messy but true nature of human emotions. And while the technology may seem far-fetched, we are already seeing people getting sucked into weird technology-based "relationships."
I do have to say, it was interesting to read in the author's note that this is the actual the third draft she wrote! She tossed out the first two after feeling like they were two dark. First, I'm curious about the earlier versions. They sounded interesting to me! But two, I do appreciate that she tackled a serious subject in a relatively light-hearted rom-com way, which was not easy to pull off. This book forces the reader to think about a heavy topic in the guise of a love story. This could have been a real Frankenstein's monster story and it's really still that story, but in the guise of a rom com.
I'm never a huge fan of love triangles and this one was especially complicated because it's almost a love square? with Chloe pulled between her match making service man, her old writing partner Sean, and another old friend from her past. But it works well, I think largely because Chloe quickly gains a lot of clarity about her past and what she wants from life. I also loved the Romy and Michelle references! This did give off strong Romy and Michelle, vibes with Chloe trying hard to impress her former classmate by essentially lying about what she has accomplished since graduation.
Stars: 4
Related Titles:
Comments
Post a Comment