Book Review: The Soulmate Equation

I finished Christina Lauren’s The Soulmate Equation over the weekend and I loved it so much more than I thought I would.

The novel follows Jess Davis, a 30 year old single mom who is a data and statistics pro. As a freelance statistician, she spends almost every weekday at a local coffee shop with her best friend, Fizzy, a romance writer, working while consuming coffee and baked goods. Every morning at 8:24, a tall and handsome man in his 30s walks in and orders an Americano. He doesn’t talk to anyone, he doesn’t smile or laugh. He just orders his coffee, collects it, and leaves. When Jess and Fizzy learn from the barista that “Americano” is actually a genius geneticist and is the founder of a new dating app that conducts DNA-based matchmaking. Fizzy is intrigued and after an impromptu conversation with “Americano” aka River Pena and he invites them to the offices to check out the testing.

Fizzy drags Jess along even though she has just recently decided she won’t be dating until her 7 year old daughter, Juno, is much older. On a whim, Jess sends in her spit test. She isn’t really expecting to have much success, but then a few days later she gets a call from GeneticAlly asking her to come in to meet with the board. She thinks they want to ask her professional opinion and talk to her about the statistics of it all. She was not expecting that she just matched with someone and their result was the highest match GeneticAlly has ever seen – a diamond match. She scored a 98 compatibility with River.

Hesitant that this is real and not really looking to date, Jess is persuaded to just give dating River a try. They can see if they’d actually hit it off, even though their first impressions of each other were less than stellar, and the company can get some really good publicity before they go public.

I really loved seeing Jess and River get to know each other and watch their love story unfold. River came off at first as stiff and cold, but once Jess got to know him he was such a good guy and he solidified a spot in my book boyfriend list. Juno, Jess’s daughter, was one of the best characters! She was so cute and smart. Juno and River’s relationship was adorable and the epilogue was everything!

When I started reading this, I knew I’d like it (as I’ve liked the other Christina Lauren books I’ve read so far) but wasn’t sure if I’d love it or not. I was just fresh off my Things We Never Got Over slump, but I ended up loving this book so much. It had humor, had happy moments and sad moments, and just felt so real.

A book about Fizzy is coming out this summer and I can’t wait to see her love story! I’m hoping we get a decent amount of Jess, River, and Juno!

Read this if you’re looking for a contemporary romance with a slow burn and single parent trope. It has a little bit of an enemies to lovers since Jess doesn’t really care for River at first (even though I think part of the reason she doesn’t like him is because he’s so good looking) but her dislike of him becomes friendly quick enough that I wouldn’t really categorize it as that.

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