The True Love Experiment - Christina Lauren

[goodreads]

Title: The True Love Experiment
Author: Christina Lauren
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~11hrs
Date read: June 2023

Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached.

Fizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she’s spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?

Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass—unless he agrees to cast the contestants according to a list of romance archetypes. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.


Sort of a sequel to "The Soulmate Equation", but focusing on Fizzy rather than Jess. So it's not absolutely necessary to have read TSE first, but it definitely helps.

I really enjoyed it. I liked Fizzy, and thought her growing friendship with Connor was very well written - definitely show rather than tell! Her plans for the reality show had me laughing out loud, as did the stereotypes she asked Connor to cast. It worked really well. I'm glad to we got to "see" so many of the episodes being filmed - I'd been worried that they'd do the first few and last few and skip the rest, but that wasn't the case at all, fortunately. For once the "third act conflict" was really well handled too, and was actually a believable conflict, rather than one that could have been prevented by simple communication - which meant that it rang true, and didn't leave me wanting to shake the two people involved.

Very sweet book. Perhaps a tad heavy on the spice in places, but very cute.