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A review by cmangles_
The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen
3.0
This started out really strong. The idea of The Arc was a fresh and exciting take on dating and for the first 35% of the novel I thought this would be a really unique romance fiction story that I was very excited to read.
It offered a take on dating culture and relationships that I personally haven't come across yet in any other novel, whilst mixing the idea of science and emotions to find your one perfect match in the world for a one-off fee of $50,000 (or $45,000 for women due to the gender pay gap).
However, it quickly lost pace and instead of being the unique romance fic I thought it would be, it became an overall pushy and monologue-y social commentary on women in the workplace, fourth-wave feminism, and the whole "power to the woman" theme - which is fine, but not at all what it's advertised to be nor what I expected.
Because of this, the second half of the novel is all over the place and doesn't seem to know what it wants to be;
- The dialogue when she meets her match is cringe and I'm not sure if it's satire because they're meant to be the "perfect" match" or not,
- There's a major plot hole in that how can you know you've met your perfect match if only the rich can afford the $50,000 fee? Again, if this is satire then it's not obvious,
- The second half of the book isn't really about the relationship. It's more about her career crisis and how she wants to be more empowering, fight for women and investment in the workplace whilst she does absolutely nothing to make it happen other than say her female assistant needs a pay rise and go to a weird feminist cult club where they have shakra massages and do yoga and meditate to rid themselves of toxic energy. Like WTF?! This almost feels like it takes the piss out of women's rights and how people view feminists.
Overall, I think this book tries to do too much. It would have been much better had it chosen a path it wanted to pursue and stuck to it and did it well.
It offered a take on dating culture and relationships that I personally haven't come across yet in any other novel, whilst mixing the idea of science and emotions to find your one perfect match in the world for a one-off fee of $50,000 (or $45,000 for women due to the gender pay gap).
However, it quickly lost pace and instead of being the unique romance fic I thought it would be, it became an overall pushy and monologue-y social commentary on women in the workplace, fourth-wave feminism, and the whole "power to the woman" theme - which is fine, but not at all what it's advertised to be nor what I expected.
Because of this, the second half of the novel is all over the place and doesn't seem to know what it wants to be;
- The dialogue when she meets her match is cringe and I'm not sure if it's satire because they're meant to be the "perfect" match" or not,
- There's a major plot hole in that how can you know you've met your perfect match if only the rich can afford the $50,000 fee? Again, if this is satire then it's not obvious,
- The second half of the book isn't really about the relationship. It's more about her career crisis and how she wants to be more empowering, fight for women and investment in the workplace whilst she does absolutely nothing to make it happen other than say her female assistant needs a pay rise and go to a weird feminist cult club where they have shakra massages and do yoga and meditate to rid themselves of toxic energy. Like WTF?! This almost feels like it takes the piss out of women's rights and how people view feminists.
Overall, I think this book tries to do too much. It would have been much better had it chosen a path it wanted to pursue and stuck to it and did it well.