Review: The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
I really had an excellent time reading this book.
The Soulmate Equation follows single mom statistician Jess, whose best friend cajoles her into joining a DNA-based dating site. She ends up with a match, the highest match in the companies history, with River. River is the grumpy and slightly hostile regular at the coffee shop she frequents, who is also one of the company's founders. From here, the company convinces Jess to give River a shot offering her money in exchange for participating in press. The pair begin to date privately, both very aware of the incentives the other has to make this relationship work.
There were so many factors about this book that I genuinely really loved. You could tell that the authors thought deeply about how this kind of company could run ethically at all, they address racial bias, don't stigmatize people wanting to select for social factors in addition to the DNA stuff, you can absolutely tell at least one of the authors was obsessed with the larger narrative around Theranos. There are little nods to the absolute nonsense surrounding that company; other people also obsessed with this will be delighted by the little nods to that. I really liked the meta element of Fizzy, Jess' best friend, being a romance author; I also just thought Fizzy seemed like an excellent and supportive friend, which I always love in romance.
Some folks don't like kids in romance. There is an eight-year-old in this book; I think she is in the book an appropriate amount, it is clear that being a mom is a material part of Jess's everyday life but the whole book isn't about motherhood. That will totally be a personal factor in picking this book up or not; I found Juno, her daughter, a fun character. She mostly seemed to have appropriate kid behavior and was great for providing levity and pushing the plot forward.
My least favorite bit of this book is I don't think River's behavior before the pair started dating was adequately addressed. It wasn't like he was the worlds most terrible person, but he was shown to be a bad tipper who kind of doesn't care about other people because he is very in his own head, which is kind of addressed, but he mostly just seemed so incredibly different once they got together. It was a little odd when I realized that all their conversations about his earlier behavior were funny. But aside from this oddity, I did genuinely find River's character journey in this book to be well done and interesting. I particularly liked the tensions between personal and professional actions.
Jess was a great main character. She is kind, witty, and smart; she is shown to have a full life outside of the relationship we are reading about; her goal isn't for a relationship to fix her problems but to strengthen her support system. I liked that it wasn't River the scientist and Jess being baffled by numbers. I found this aspect wonderful. I really liked watching her thoughts change about if she wanted a relationship and what she wanted out of that relationship. I especially liked that she was constantly shown to be intelligent, but that wasn't at the detriment of having emotions.
I am not totally sure how I feel about Jess's mom's role in the story; she is an addict who is largely estranged from the family. I did like that you could see how Jess was reacting to the trauma from her own childhood with her mother, and I liked the shade against MLM's preying on at-risk women, and I like that Jess was able to set boundaries with her relationship with her mother. Which kind of does seem like I liked all of this storyline, but maybe I just wanted a little more exposition on her mother, though that might not be fair to expect.
I would absolutely recommend this book if you want your rom-com to touch on science, class, family, and long-term compatibility. Also, I cried once, but it was in the acknowledgments.
