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lauren_dots 's review for:
The True Love Experiment
by Christina Lauren
The True Love Experiment was Fine™. Is it Christina Lauren's best book? No, but it's certainly not their worst. What it might be is their most inconsistent.
Even though The True Love Experiment isn't considered a sequel or companion book of The Soulmate Equation, characters from TSE make their return here with Fizzy the romance novelist serving as the heroine and to-be star of a Bachelorette-like show featuring different MMC romance tropes as suitors, such as the tattooed bad boy, cinnamon roll, and even vampire. However, her growing feelings for one of the show's producers, Connor, starts to get in the way. Just like with TSE, this was a really great concept for a book.
Let's start with the good (day I say great) of this book: the tension they built between Fizzy and Connor was eveerryythhinngg. I blew through the first two thirds of this book as Christina Lauren would give a little and then take it all away once again. I don't love the single father trope, especially when the kid is always the same, but they really made this work with Connor and his daughter Stevie.
Now let's get to the not so great: The pacing was a little whack. As much as I liked the concept, it took so long for the show to actually start?? And so little of this book was the show. It was weird how much of the relationship between Fizzy and Connor was built before the show, which made that part of the book fall flat for me. I wish more of this relatively long book for a contemporary romance focused on the show. Also, the last 100 pages absolutely drraagggggggged. The reason for the third-act breakup was pretty weak, and I found myself stunned by the wtf-ery of how both characters were acting.
Christina Lauren struck gold with Love and Other Words and in a way are a victim of their own success--none of their books have measured up since then in my opinion, and until they can tap into the magic, depth, and emotion of LAOW, their books will pale in comparison.
Even though The True Love Experiment isn't considered a sequel or companion book of The Soulmate Equation, characters from TSE make their return here with Fizzy the romance novelist serving as the heroine and to-be star of a Bachelorette-like show featuring different MMC romance tropes as suitors, such as the tattooed bad boy, cinnamon roll, and even vampire. However, her growing feelings for one of the show's producers, Connor, starts to get in the way. Just like with TSE, this was a really great concept for a book.
Let's start with the good (day I say great) of this book: the tension they built between Fizzy and Connor was eveerryythhinngg. I blew through the first two thirds of this book as Christina Lauren would give a little and then take it all away once again. I don't love the single father trope, especially when the kid is always the same, but they really made this work with Connor and his daughter Stevie.
Now let's get to the not so great: The pacing was a little whack. As much as I liked the concept, it took so long for the show to actually start?? And so little of this book was the show. It was weird how much of the relationship between Fizzy and Connor was built before the show, which made that part of the book fall flat for me. I wish more of this relatively long book for a contemporary romance focused on the show. Also, the last 100 pages absolutely drraagggggggged. The reason for the third-act breakup was pretty weak, and I found myself stunned by the wtf-ery of how both characters were acting.
Christina Lauren struck gold with Love and Other Words and in a way are a victim of their own success--none of their books have measured up since then in my opinion, and until they can tap into the magic, depth, and emotion of LAOW, their books will pale in comparison.