I was expecting this book to be a good romance story with a journey that I had read before - people looking for love find their perfect match just when they have given up hope of ever being successful in love - but what I got was much more than that. There is a dark humour running through the story that holds up a mirror to not only the way we look for love in modern society but also our expectations around relationships and what constitutes a 'happy ever after'. The belief that someone (or something) can take on the responsibility for our happiness and the fact that this leads us to look to an external entity to tell us when we have achieved that goal, irrespective of what we feel ourselves, is examined in what I found to be a really engaging way.
The main characters, Ursula and Rafael, are both fully fleshed out, I believed in them and the choices they made as they went through the rigorous process set out by The Arc aligned to the values and beliefs that they had. My only real criticism of the writing was that the supporting characters were all a little two-dimensional, I didn't really feel engaged with them at all. Likewise, the inclusion of The Stake, a feminist collaborative working space/wellness club that Ursula and her friend Issa frequent - this was the setting for quite a few scenes but I couldn't really get a handle on its importance in terms of the story. It could be that it was there to emphasise that Ursula was looking for a regime/movement that would bring her what she wanted in her life, but I was never really sure.
All in all, a great story that I found myself wanting to read as quickly as I could.
The main characters, Ursula and Rafael, are both fully fleshed out, I believed in them and the choices they made as they went through the rigorous process set out by The Arc aligned to the values and beliefs that they had. My only real criticism of the writing was that the supporting characters were all a little two-dimensional, I didn't really feel engaged with them at all. Likewise, the inclusion of The Stake, a feminist collaborative working space/wellness club that Ursula and her friend Issa frequent - this was the setting for quite a few scenes but I couldn't really get a handle on its importance in terms of the story. It could be that it was there to emphasise that Ursula was looking for a regime/movement that would bring her what she wanted in her life, but I was never really sure.
All in all, a great story that I found myself wanting to read as quickly as I could.