He'd learned relationships didn't need truth to make them work, they just needed one of them to possess a heart large enough to beat for both of them.
The One
by John Marrs
Genre: Sci-Fi
About: Love at first sight is real. Soulmates exist: it's all in your DNA. Once the discover is made that a unique strand of DNA can be matched to find true love, the world splits into the happily Matched and the still waiting, unlucky Unmatched. But what happens to those families made before the discovery, and how perfect really is your Match?
The Good
This novel has several POVs and each one could have been a novel all onto itself. I found each character really interesting to follow. You have Mandy, approaching 40 fearing she's lost her chance at a family after her husband left her for his Match, then Nick whose about to get married but his fiancé wants them to do the test before they tie the knot, Jude whose Match is on the other side of the world, Ellie who made the scientific discovery but has so far been unlucky with love herself, and Christopher who just happens to be a serial killer. Each story has a great hook and I enjoyed switching through all of them.
The Bad
The stories do become a little melodramatic towards the end. I mean the serial killer's one was melodramatic from the beginning, but some of the other twists delve into realms that I don't think it was necessary to go. The relationships were interesting enough without adding in a mentally unstable step-mum for Mandy, or finding out that Nick's fiancé had been cheating on him from the beginning and their baby is actually his best friend's (she then conveniently dies and the real father wants nothing to do with his son so Nick gets his happy ending in NZ with Alex and his adopted son). The Tim/Matthew twist was well foreshadowed and had a good pay off but again leaned towards melodrama in the big showdown.
The Somewhat Iffy
I can believe Matthew wanted revenge on the idea of Ellie in her 'ivory tower' playing God but I struggle to believe that he was (1) either able to develop zero feelings for her once he got to know her, or that, if this was the case, that (2) he was able to hide so well the extent of his hate for her. We get good hints that Tim isn't who he says he is, but we don't get any indication of how much he hates her until the end. And it's a hate he developed before he even met her. The fact that he is able to deceive her, her family, everyone he meets, is a little unbelievable.
Overall
This is lightening fast to read. The characters all have great stories, the concept is interesting and the chapters are so short you can't help going onto the next one, and the next one, until you're racing through to the end.
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