Thoughtful and so very cool!

This is a cool take on arranged marriage in the future. I’m not crazy about hard core sci-fi so thank goodness this isn’t that. It’s more of what would it look like if people of a certain class all get partnered based on an algorithm instead of free will and choice. I’m still waiting to find out what happened to birth the algorithm that drives everything, so that is odd.

Lee is a guy desperately trying to avoid the algorithm. He doesn’t want to marry, but the taxes imposed on his family if he doesn’t are astronomical. So here comes Roman, a man giving Lee practical advice on his brother of the bride speech and information. Information is Lee’s catnip. And oooh! My catnip is cool metaphors.

Lee balks at drinking vodka straight. So Roman takes a knife, jabs at the ice sculpture of flowers and flicks off a petal, which he gives to Lee. Then he licked his thumb and smoothed over the spot so it blends. So yeah, he just chipped off a bit of Happiness, Hope and Love and handed it to Lee. Insert hearts in eyes here.

Okay, I will confess that I didn’t catch the subtext until the second listen and found even more on the fourth. ? Hehe. I love it when an entertaining story can be re-read and enjoyed in different ways many times over.

And I soooo enjoyed this story. I was not a fan of the narrator’s performance, though. Lee’s voice reminded me of Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island during the first listen because it sounds querulous and posh. Sigh. I mean, it fits the character like it should so I can’t hate it. The accent didn’t deter me from listening to this story multiple times and it won’t stop me from doing so in the future. I CAN hope for a sexier voice for the MC’s. That’s the only reason the performance is a 4.5 instead of 5. Overall, Joel Leslie is very good at bringing the story to life.

“I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.”