Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O'Clover

❝ 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨’𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐭. ❞

- Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O’Clover

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this amazing book, coming out January 17th!

Genre: YA contemporary romance

Overall rating: 4.5/5

# books in series: standalone

Tropes: childhood friends to enemies to lovers, slow burn

Song: "New Year's Day" by Taylor Swift

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.

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.

My review:

I cannot believe this is a debut novel.

Seriously. The writing is fantastic, and really screams YA without screaming YA, if you know what I mean (you probably don't. That's okay. I will explain). The prose is clearly up to date on how teenagers actually talk and react to things, and doesn’t feel like an adult was attempting to speak through adolescents (which yes, is apparently an easy mistake for authors to make).

I really enjoyed the story: yes, it’s a romcom, but it’s also more than that. it’s a coming of age book, in which Ro overcomes personal struggles and learns important lessons in a very relatable way for any high school senior. Also, shoutout to the seamlessly incorporated flashbacks - I felt like we got the right amounts at the right times and in a natural way within the narrative, which is so much not a given.

This not to say, however, that the romance arc wasn’t on point, because it absolutely was. This book has two of my favorite tropes: slow burn and childhood best friends to ‘indifferent enemies’ to lovers, which are executed flawlessley. You can feel what the characters are feeling at each separate stage: during the flashbacks Ro and Miller are clearly inseparable (and Miller so in love with Ro), in the fake dating stage the tension is so strong you could cut it with a knife, and when they finally make up they’re so, so sweet.

I'm not very articulate, so I'll keep saying the same thing as many times as it takes to sink in: I loved this book. So much. It’s one of those I actually would read more spin-offs about, maybe exploring some of the other characters’ stories too.

Add Seven Percent of Ro Devereux to your Goodreads TBR here!