Monday, October 26, 2020

Book Review: "The Code for Love and Heartbreak" by Jillian Cantor

In Jillian Cantor's new YA novel, The Code for Love and Heartbreak, math is one thing. Love is another.

It’s senior year of high school for overachiever Emma Woodhouse. She’s at the top of her class, she’s co-president of the Coding Club, and with her perfect SATs, she hopes to go to Stanford next year.

But while she has the academics down pat, she’s not particularly social. She doesn’t really have many (or any) friends save George, her co-president, and she has no desire to find a boyfriend.

In an effort to win a national coding competition, she comes up with a great idea: an app which will match her fellow students up based on mutual interests, using an algorithm. George and some other club members think she’s lost her mind—love isn’t something you can code.

But “The Love Code” seems to be working, and all of her classmates are interested in getting matches. What does it mean, though, when the matches don’t work?

The more focused on the app and the competition Emma becomes, the more blind she is to what’s going on around her. Why are people breaking up if the algorithm predicts matches? And how can an algorithm consider the intangible qualities that make people fall in love?

This was a cute and enjoyable retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma. (It’s been a while since I read that one, so while I know the names of the characters are the same, I don't remember how much of the plot of this book resembles that one.) Sure, it’s predictable, but that didn’t really matter to me.

I love a good rom-com, even when math is involved!

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