A review by sueread2030
The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
2.0
There is one clear thing I want to make here One side POV does not work anymore in Romance in 2023
This is going to be one of my "I liked it but I would never recommend it" unless someone wanted a quick 2-hour read.
I loved the Science aspect of the book and the question it poses "Can Science and Data help us find our soulmates?" Maybe in the future
And it was clear that the writer heavily researched the topic to the point that she almost convinced me of the idea.
However, the plot was so cliche and predictable it wasn't entertaining. It is never fun when you are reading and you go "I bet this and that will happen" then "oh! look! it happened!".
This type of story would have been tolerable back in 2000 or 2010, but not in 2022 (the year this was published) because I am so fed up with"
He is the smart, rich, hot successful business/Science man who turns everything he touches into gold
she is the ordinary single mother with shitty parents, an awful ex, and a loser career.
and get this: There is actually a character called "Butkis" who is married to someone named "Seaman"!!
not only that, the lame Dad-jokes that took place on p:200!
add to that the one thing I hate the most in romance books, "the meddling best friend" who is 35 yrs old and thinks that a good fuck is all you need to end world hunger with a line like my vagina just unfurled like a flower
This is a 385 pages book all from Jess's POV (except for the longest 3o pages epilogue of River's which was pointless), the whole story was told from Jess's perspective. But the book is about the experiment of finding your Soulmate through science, so we needed River's POV throughout the book!
we did not get that. What we get instead are fillers, useless plotlines that did not add anything to the story.
There is also a twist where Jess discovers something very important due to her statistical mind and academia, but later River never considers making her join his team???? she practically saved his project!
Because of all these, this book was heading into a disaster of my 1-star reviews shelf.
However, what saved it was two things
1- the detailed scientific aspects
2- the ending (I do not want to spoil)
one star for each making it 2
This is going to be one of my "I liked it but I would never recommend it" unless someone wanted a quick 2-hour read.
I loved the Science aspect of the book and the question it poses "Can Science and Data help us find our soulmates?" Maybe in the future
And it was clear that the writer heavily researched the topic to the point that she almost convinced me of the idea.
However, the plot was so cliche and predictable it wasn't entertaining. It is never fun when you are reading and you go "I bet this and that will happen" then "oh! look! it happened!".
This type of story would have been tolerable back in 2000 or 2010, but not in 2022 (the year this was published) because I am so fed up with"
He is the smart, rich, hot successful business/Science man who turns everything he touches into gold
she is the ordinary single mother with shitty parents, an awful ex, and a loser career.
and get this: There is actually a character called "Butkis" who is married to someone named "Seaman"!!
not only that, the lame Dad-jokes that took place on p:200!
add to that the one thing I hate the most in romance books, "the meddling best friend" who is 35 yrs old and thinks that a good fuck is all you need to end world hunger with a line like my vagina just unfurled like a flower
This is a 385 pages book all from Jess's POV (except for the longest 3o pages epilogue of River's which was pointless), the whole story was told from Jess's perspective. But the book is about the experiment of finding your Soulmate through science, so we needed River's POV throughout the book!
we did not get that. What we get instead are fillers, useless plotlines that did not add anything to the story.
There is also a twist where Jess discovers something very important due to her statistical mind and academia, but later River never considers making her join his team???? she practically saved his project!
Because of all these, this book was heading into a disaster of my 1-star reviews shelf.
However, what saved it was two things
1- the detailed scientific aspects
2- the ending (I do not want to spoil)
one star for each making it 2