True Love and Other Impossible Odds by Christina Li
Summary: College freshman Grace Tang never meant to rewrite the rules of love. She came to college to move on from a grief-stricken senior year and to start anew. So she follows a predictable routine: Attend class, study, go home and visit her dad every weekend. She doesn’t leave any room in her life for outliers or anomalies.
Then, Grace comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners. Though some people are skeptical, like Julia, Grace’s prickly coworker, Grace is confident that her program will take all the drama out of relationships. That’s why she keeps trying to make things work with her match, a guy named Jamie. But as the semester goes on and she grows closer to Julia, Grace starts to question who she’s really attracted to.
In award-winning author Christina Li’s YA debut, Grace will have to make a choice between the tidy equations she knows will protect her from heartbreak or the possibility that true love doesn’t follow any formula.
My Thoughts: Can love be predicted with logic and numbers? It’s an interesting question that Grace and her fellow math classmates are wrestling with for their project. Science and math can do a lot of things for us so why not finding matches for people? It’s a fun topic to explore or at least watch characters attempt to do so.
Grace learns a lot about herself as she and her math partners implement their program. Why some people click and others don’t has them questioning their algorithm, but also themselves. The friends and other students that Grace is interacting with have opinions about the project, but the farther they get into it, the more questions arise.
The story bounces back and forth between her college freshman year and the time when her mother was still alive and before a rift with Grace’s best friend. She’s grieving both losses and is only beginning to venture into new relationships both romantic and otherwise. She stumbles around a bit, but the book feels like a hug as she finds some connections, learns about herself, and begins to heal.
Seeing her muddle her way through new relationships was a little like watching a young horse start walking. It’s a lovely coming of age story as Grace really delve into her feelings and discovers more about herself. She creates new bonds and takes a good look at how she has interacted with her father and her previous best friend.
I loved the snowy ski excursions and it made me realize I haven’t seen skiing in many young adult books. Grace and Julia have that common interest which really helps them get to know each other and it adds to the cozy feeling of the book. This book would be great with a cup of hot cocoa and a blanket.
Recommendation: Get it soon especially if you enjoy seeing characters discover more about themselves and like a sweet bit of romance.
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Pages: 389
Review Copy: Final copy via publisher
Availability: On sale May 14, 2024