Fans of Emma Lord, Rachel Lynn Solomon, and Alex Light will love this clever, charming, and poignant debut novel with a masterful slow-burn romance at its core about a girl who must decide whether to pursue her dreams or preserve her relationships, including a budding romance with her ex-best friend, when an app she created goes viral.

Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.

Working with her neighbor, a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy. The app will even match users with their soulmates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.

Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soulmate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago.

Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams. And as the app takes on a life of its own, Ro sees that it’s affecting people in ways she never expected—and if she can’t regain control, it might take her and everything she believes in down with it.

*Review*

I loved the flashback scenes; they flowed so seamlessly with the rest of the story. I enjoyed that we got to see/experience Ro and Miller’s past, rather than be told what happened way back when.

Ro is this deeply complex character. She’s an uber smart STEM young woman who creates this fun, future predicting app with almost 100% accuracy.
Miller is the little boy, now young man, who feels so deeply. I loved him from the beginning!
O’Clover shows us that Ro & Miller’s relationship started off almost symbiotic in a way. Ro was this little girl who didn’t know how to feel or experience things, so she learned her social/emotional cues from Miller, from learning to walk to what to fear.

I would have loved, loved, loved there have been more build up to their no longer fake relationship. To me, there just wasn’t enough to bridge the gap that quickly. It was total animosity (on Miller’s part) on second then absolute love declarations the next.

I love YA books because they usually have some of the most powerful and raw emotions, SPoRD was no different.
There are brief mention of SA and coping with that, as well as parental abandonment.
I got chocked up a few times with my heart hammering and my stomach dropping. Tissues may be needed.

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux was a delightful debut novel. I cannot wait to see more from Ellen O’Clover!

Tropes:

Fake Dating

Friends – to – Enemies – to Lovers

Women in STEM

Forced Proximity

Guy Falls First

Technology Obsessed Culture

Content Warning:

Sexual Assault

Parental Abandonment

Cancer & Death

You can read my original review for YABC here.

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