REVIEW: The Love for Code and Heartbreak by Jillian Cantor

What it’s about: 

The Code for Love and Heartbreak is a modern twist on Emma by Jane Austen. It follows Emma Woodhouse, who relies on math, numbers, and logic, but remains clueless to people. Her sister is moving across the country for college, leaving her to fend for herself during senior year along with George, her Co-president of the Coding Club. This year, for the state coding competition, Emma decides to find “The Code For Love” designing an app that gives you your perfect mathematical match based on her algorithm. It starts strong, bringing Emma popularity in her school as everyone seeks her out for their own perfect match. But then couples start breaking up, people start falling for the wrong ones, maybe even including Emma. What happens when Emma can’t count on numbers anymore? 

My thoughts:

I thought this was a cute story and a fun twist on the classic tale. I enjoyed most of the characters and the concept was really interesting. I’m no genius about math and coding but the novel made it really easy to understand and follow the Coding Club’s project. I will admit I had the intended love interest wrong for about half of the story, which was slightly disappointing at first. My favorite thing about this book was Emma’s growth as she came out of her shell and embraced her personality instead of trying to force herself to be who others wanted, but my issue is that the ending almost undid all of that progress? And the resolution didn’t fully compensate for that in my opinion. I found it hard to like George, but the end scene really saved his character for me. In summary, this book felt like watching a fun rom-com, and while I can't attest to its accuracy as a retelling, I thought it was a fun light read! 

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Rating:★★★.5/5