Early Reader Review: Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O' Clover

Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review. 

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O' Clover 
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date:   January 17, 2023

 

Format: Ebook


Rating:


Goodreads Synopsis: 

A clever, charming, and poignant debut novel about a girl who must decide whether to pursue her dreams or preserve her relationships, including a budding romance with her ex-best friend, when an app she created goes viral.

Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.

Working with her neighbor, a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy. The app will even match users with their soul mates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.

Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soul mate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago. Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams.

Fans of Emma Lord and Alex Light will love this stand-alone contemporary novel with a masterful slow-burn romance at its core.

Review: 

This was such a wonderful read and cute story.  

For Ro's senior project she has developed an app based on a childhood games and cognitive behavior science called MASH. The app can with 93% accuracy tell the user their profession, location, and #of kids for the future based on how they respond to a survey and soon Ro would like to add the partner piece as well. After her presentation the app blows up on social media and is then picked up by an incubator called XLR8, they want to build and grow the app and to do so the match/ partner piece needs to work. 

Ro is thrown into the real world really fast, while 18 she is still young in a lot of ways, but when offered her dream she jumps at the chance. When the app gets picked up she almost immediately signs a contract and effectivly gives up half of her app to them. In addition, she is now the face of the app and its new dating match functionality. What starts as fake-dating soon becomes more complicated. 

Miller, the fake boyfriend, is hard to get a read on at first and seems so mad all the time. He does what he has to do but then intentions become clearer and it is swoon-worthy and so cute in a very PG way. 

We have so many great elements to this plot and story, Ro is a strong, determined, and stubborn characters, thinking she knows what is best and running into trouble along the way. We have her and her overachieving 'match' Miller, who used to be best friends growing up but Ro ruined it, then we have some mom drama, STEM awesomeness, and in the end enemies to love. This was a slow-burn romance with so much depth around the tech work. While the story is told from Ro's POV, we also have some wonderful flashback scenes that are so well done and placed well too.

I really enjoyed the progression of the book and connected so well with the characters, because they are written so well and true to their ages. There were a few twists that seemed obvious to me, but I enjoyed the closure and I would love to read more about Ro and her life.