Book Review: The One

THE ONE | John Marrs
05.04.2017 | Del Rey
Rating: 5/5 stars

Match Your DNA promises that with just a simple mouth swab you can be paired to your perfect partner, the person who is your genetic match. Since the service launched a decade ago, millions of people around the world have submitted themselves to the pool of participants desperate to find their match. The discovery of this gene that can match you with your soul mate has led to millions of happy relationships, but at what cost? Those submitting their DNA to be tested have not always been single, they have been people in relationships. The breakup of countless relationships, marriages, and happy homes have been caused by this service. Despite the negative possibilities, every day more people submit their mouth swab. The chance to meet your match has started to outweigh any consequences.

I read something online that said Match Your DNA is going to break up around 3 million marriages. But within a generation divorce will barely be a thing anymore. 

Five very different people have recently received notification that their perfect match has been found. They are now about to meet their match and discover who this other person genetically perfect for them is. What lies within these people isn’t always the stuff you see in romance movies. A person’s genetic match has the possibility to have many secrets. Can these people get over the secrets hiding within their matches to find happily ever after?

Really, you have no idea how it feels when you meet the one, do you? How, when you’re with them, the whole world melts away and you feel like you’ve been hit by the force of a tsunami. And how nobody else in the world exists in that moment apart from you and him.

John Marrs structures THE ONE with five alternating narratives of individuals getting to meet their genetic match. Each story has it’s own unique set of issues. There are the ways they were drawn together, the secrets that compile their everyday lives, and the truths of who they truly are. Marrs writes about not only the secrets we keep closest to us, but also human nature’s innate notion to believe things with scientific backing. At no point do these people who have been genetically matched question the believability of this pairing and are willing to overlook many oddities to make a relationship work. THE ONE is filled with twists and revelations that will have you flying through each person’s narrative to get back to them again and find out where each story will take the players involved. This novel is perfect for those who are intrigued by a believable scientific ability of the future mixed with the structure of a thriller.

The US release of this book is slated for February 20th. For those impatient readers, like myself, head over to Book Depository today and pick up your copy!