THE SOULMATE EQUATION

For readers of The Rosie Project and One Plus One, an "entertaining and moving" novel about what happens when a matchmaking company finds an ideal match in an unlikely pair, by the author of The Unhoneymooners.

Freelance statistics whiz Jess Davis can dissect a dataset to predict how often it'll rain or how much consumers are willing to spend on organic cheese, but no amount of number crunching can convince this 29-year-old single mom to step a single toe back into the dating world. So when her best friend Fizzy convinces Jess to visit GeneticAlly - a cutting-edge DNA matchmaking company on the cusp of going public - Jess goes along only because Fizzy doesn't exactly give her the choice. Immediately put off by the lead scientist, Dr. River Pena, Jess is convinced this service is absolutely not for her. No matter how sexy Dr. Pena is.

Back home, she puts the test kit on a shelf and forget about it. ...Until her brutal 30th birthday, on which she loses her biggest account, finds herself the only single person at the school science fair info night, and starts to feel lonesome enough to take action. On impulse, Jess spits into the vial and mails it, not even daring to hope for a good match, let alone a soul mate.

But when her results come in, she doesn't get them in her email. GeneticAlly brings her to their headquarters for a meeting, where they drop a veritable bomb: Jess's DNA shows an as-yet unheard of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database.
Specifically, with Client 000001: Dr. River Pena.

Horrified to be so conclusively paired with the one person she's positive she could never enjoy a polite meal with, let alone love, Jess is convinced the data must be a false positive. But a 98% match is the buzzy headline GeneticAlly needs prior to their public launch, and what could be cuter than an in-house success story?

Before they can spell a-l-g-o-r-i-t-h-m, the glowering River and deeply private Jess are fluffed, buffed, and paraded as the company's golden soulmate pairing. But in the midst of all of the hype - and while thrust together for media events and investor parties - Jess and River finally locate some common ground. Common ground leads to attraction, and attraction leads to unexpected heat, and pretty soon the couple is throwing skepticism to the wind. So when Jess discovers a shocking secret, she is terrified it might cause River to lose the company he's worked so hard to build, and the feelings she's so hard worked to believe could be her happily ever after.

Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of 26 books, including the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, The Unhoneymooners, Twice in a Blue Moon, The Honey-Don't List, and In a Holidaze.