Blurb:
Jess Davis is a number genius, but when it comes to love she’s had to accept there is no magic formula. Juggling a career with raising her daughter, it’s not surprising that her love life is… non-existent. When yet another date ends in disaster, she’s prepared to give up on love for good.
But then she hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new matchmaking company that claims to find you the One using a DNA equation. Suddenly, love doesn’t seem quite so far out of reach…
Until her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr River Pena. Jess already knows Dr Pena, and this man is 100% not her soulmate. Yet as the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the ultimate ‘Diamond’ pairing that could make GeneticAlly a fortune, Jess begins to realise that there might be more to the scientist – and to the science behind a soulmate – than she thought.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Contemporary Romance, Fiction
- Highly recommend for 14 years and above
- TW: Abandonment, Familial Estrangement, Alcoholism and substance addiction (mentioned)
- Romance Tropes: Strangers to Lovers
Book Quotes:
- “I haven’t been home in years, but I feel that way with you.”
- “Destiny could also be a choice, she realized. To believe or not, to be vulnerable or not, to go all in or not.”
- “I want to be here to bring you coffee. I want to take you out to dinner and order the same food and hear you recite the odds that we would have met. I want to hate-attend fancy social events together.” Jess laughed, a surprised burst of sound, and his tone softened. “I want you to call me for help—without an apology already on the tip of your tongue. I want to feel like I can kiss you again by your car at the end of the night.” He swallowed. “I want you in my bed.”
- “Statistics can’t tell us what will happen, they can only tell us what might happen.”
- “I generally want to commit a felony when I see him. I’m not sure that’s a sign of romantic compatibility.”
- “I’d suspect most people comment on your eyes,” he said quietly, running a fingertip across her collarbone. “That startling, bright blue.” Surely he could feel her heart scaling her windpipe. He didn’t seem to remember there was anyone else in the room. “But I prefer your mouth.” “You do?” Jess managed. “I do,” he said, and bent, kissing her forehead. “You don’t give those smiles away for free.”
- “Speaking to him is like having a conversation with a grouchy calculator.”
- “Empty companionship was lonelier than being alone.”
- “But come on. I know you well enough to know that you’re not carrying baggage.” He was holding her gaze, and she felt physically unable to look away. “You’ve chosen your circumstances, Jess. I like that about you. You take what you want and leave the rest behind. You decide.”
- “Youngest children are usually less ‘intense,’ ” she said with a smile, using his own description against him. “You uptight perfectionists tend to be oldest children.”
- “I realize that I’m easy to leave, but I was hoping you were better than that.”
- “Fondness warmed his gaze from the inside out, as if he was seeing exactly the person he wanted to see.”
- “It hit her in a sharp, startling truth: her whole life she had been put together wrong in one tiny, invisible, and critical way. And having that piece altered just enough for it to slide into place suddenly changed everything.”
- “I wasn’t thinking of this roomful of people when I put the cologne on earlier. I was thinking of you.”
- “Unraveled and bare, Jess knew in her bones that he was her ninety-eight.”
- “The two syllables of his name tattooed a permanent echo inside her.”
- “I find it soothing that numbers don’t lie.” “But they can be misleading.” “Only if you don’t know what to look for.”
- “She was pretty in a journalist sort of way, which was to say she had the luxury of never being the subject of her own story.”