science | Rebeccabookreview

Title: The Soulmate Equation
Author: Christina Lauren
Date finished: 5/9/21
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: May 18, 2021
Pages in book: 365
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley
NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

Single mom Jessica Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. Raised by her grandparents—who now help raise her seven-year-old daughter, Juno—Jess has been left behind too often to feel comfortable letting anyone in. After all, her father was never around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn’t “father material” before Juno was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close, but working constantly to stay afloat is hard…and lonely.

But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands.

At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98 percent compatibility with another subject in the database: one of GeneticAlly’s founders, Dr. River Peña. This is one number she can’t wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Peña. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess—who is barely making ends meet—is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. As the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the “Diamond Match” that could launch GeneticAlly’s valuation sky-high, Jess begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist—and the science behind a soulmate—than she thought.

Funny, warm, and full of heart, The Soulmate Equation proves that the delicate balance between fate and choice can never be calculated

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I love these authors a ton and they always publish books that I enjoy so much. And this was another great book of theirs! I thought this book was a great strangers/dislike to falling in love and it was really well done. The way that the relationship developed between River and Jess was immensely heart warming and I really loved both their interactions with Juno. It was enchanting to see their love story unfolding. Even more, it was so interesting to see Jess’s journey to accepting help from her loved ones and also to accepting herself. River was so painfully shy and earnest, I loved his character. Honestly all the characters were quirky and hilarious – Fizzy especially and I loved that she was a romance author. I also loved that the story featured Jess cutting off a toxic relationship with a relative. I think too often books manage to turn things around and things magically work out somehow. But sometimes a toxic relationship is just that and needs to end. I thought it was a really brave thing to do. Overall I thought it was a great love story and I really enjoyed it!

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau
Author: H.G. Wells
Date finished: 10/18/15
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Bantam
Publication Date: 1896
Pages in book: 157
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from the cover:

Ranked among the classic novels of the English language and the inspiration for several unforgettable movies, this early work of H. G. Wells was greeted in 1896 by howls of protest from reviewers, who found it horrifying and blasphemous. They wanted to know more about the wondrous possibilities of science shown in his first book, The Time Machine, not its potential for misuse and terror. In The Island of Dr. Moreau a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life.
While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells’s prediction of the ethical issues raised by producing “smarter” human beings or bringing back extinct species. These levels of interpretation add a richness to Prendick’s adventures on Dr. Moreau’s island of lost souls without distracting from what is still a rip-roaring good read.

My rating: 3.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I read this book for the Terryville Library’s Fiction Lover’s Book Discussion group discussion for this month (October). This book definitely wasn’t something I would have picked up on my own but I have to say it was absolutely the perfect thing to read during October. I found it to be very creepy and gave me the goosebumps thinking about these creatures that Prendick encounters on the island. It was only 157 pages so it was a quick read. Basically Prendick finds himself lost in the middle of the ocean on a dingy and he gets picked up by a boat with a man named Montgomery aboard. Montgomery is Moreau’s assistant and he’s returning to the island after picking up some supplies. Prendick gets ditched on the island too and even though Montgomery is very hesitant about letting him stay, he doesn’t really have much of a choice.

Prendick encounters many different kinds of people on the island, though there seems to be something a little off about each one and he finds himself wary of these creatures. Turns out Dr. Moreau had been performing vivisection on various animals over the last 10 years on the island and had managed to mold different animals together to take on a human-like form. I guess my issue is that I can’t imagine what these beasts would have looked like and how they possibly could have resembled a human even in the slightest.

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I mean none of the creatures in the photo look even remotely human to me. And Dr. Moreau spoke some about combining the different animals brains together. I’m not a scientist or anything but I feel like that wouldn’t really be possible. I don’t think you can take 2 separate brains and mash them together and have them work. I think with humans they are able to replace certain lobes of the brain but they use another human brain I’m pretty sure, I don’t think you can graft brains across different species.
I thought this was an interesting book though and it was a great October read. Its also a literary classic so I would recommend giving it a try if you haven’t already!

The bottom line: I liked this book fine. I don’t think I loved it but it was a short easy read and was appropriately creepy for the month of October.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page