Tory Henwood Hoen crafted quite the story with this one. It was a different story than what I expected it would be but still good. It was well written with very well-developed characters. Awesome writing!

The idea that a scientific evaluation and calculation to determine your perfect mate sounds wonderful.
To have mutual attraction and to fall instantly in love, with the knowledge that the relationship is guaranteed to last, is totally awesome and some people will absolutely love this book.
However, I had issues with the way it was written, which is why it was a 3 star read for me.
The main characters were well developed and the reader knows every emotion.
The dialogue was smart and snappy, but sometimes tried too hard to be funny.
I don't pretend to be a great writer, but I know what I like and I found it annoying that the author felt the need to over explain everything the characters did, giving too much nonessential information, which bogged down the plot and made the reading slow going for me.

This book was SO meta and I loved it. Ursula is the VP of Strategic Audacity at a Manhattan Brand Agency. She enlists the services of Arc, a highly selective (and expensive) dating app that matches her with Rafael, and middle aged lawyer. The app guarantees you'll find your perfect match, but are Ursula and Rafael The Real Deal? I loved the tiny snippets of satire in this book that captures how difficult dating in New York could be. This does remind me of Sally Rooney's books, just less depressing. It was an interesting concept and had me thinking.

Holy cow! I really enjoyed The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen. Thanks NetGalley for the arc.

I binged this story. I only paused for deep breaths in concern for what may happen- but then curiosity got the best of me. Absolutely 4.5 stars!

Dating in the modern age is….challenging to say the least. It’s bizarre when you hear people meet organically. Everyone meets online or through dating apps. The issue with those is that it’s easy to disappear and it’s easy to constantly think something else “better” is out there. If one little thing is off people think they can do better, or that maybe it’s a sign.

Ursula is at her wits end with dating apps and takes a dive into The Arc. This is a service where they dive into every aspect of you and your life to figure out who you are. It costs $40-$50K and a week of your life. They then claim they will find someone absolutely perfect for you. (There was a Netflix show with this same premise but not nearly as good as this book.)

After paying and doing her therapies- Ursula is matched with Rafael. Their chemistry is instant. It’s almost unbelievable and too good to be true. They have one disagreement and the Arc claims there was a blip in the data. They claim that Ursula and Rafael aren’t perfectly compatible. They offer refunds, therapeutic breakup and new matches. But the couple is determined to prove them wrong. After all they are in love!

But this “blip in the data” quickly becomes a black cloud for their relationship. It’s too much to fight against. Every tiny issue has them second guessing things. It becomes too hard to fight against the inevitable. But was their love real? Is the Arc really the “end all be all”?

This book gave me so much to think about. It intrigued me and kept me in suspense. I loved Ursula and Rafael together and couldn’t bear the thought of a breakup for these (fictional) characters. But I totally understood the pressure that cracked them. Being told you will fail is very hard to fight through. Such a cool modern dating story with traditional values weaved in!

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martins Press, and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy of this book. I got this in audiobook format and I enjoyed the narration I think she was great.
I very much enjoyed the book. I have read and watched similar premises before (The Soulmate Equation, The One, Black Mirror/Hang the DJ) but that didn’t make me enjoy this any less. There was a moment where I was thinking it might veer off from romance into thriller territory but it didn’t. After the first road bump it became pretty clear where the rest of the book was going, at least to me.
I liked Ursula a lot. She was a realistic character and no too quirky that it felt tropey or anything. Rafael was a little less interesting but I liked him as well. There were lots of funny moments. The romance and the relationship service are very much the plot of this book. It’s not a steamy romance by any means it’s definitely closed door. Which for this book is definitely a good thing, the story didn’t need sex scenes, that’s not the point.
This book will be released on 2/8/22. If the premise sounds like something you would be into, I’d definitely recommend adding this to your TBR and checking it out once it comes out.

Ursula is super successful in her career, but missing someone to share her life with. When someone gives her a card to the Arc, she is intrigued. 40 thousand dollars to find your perfect match? Yes it’s pricey, but this is going to lead her to the man she will be with forever. After their intense process, Ursula meets Rafael. Everything is perfect but when they get called back to the Arc, neither of them expects what they are about to hear.

This one was a super slow burn for the first half. It took me a long time to get half way, but then I reads the second half in one night. This was such a unique and maybe crazy idea. I mean, I guess if they promise 100% success and you have 40 thousand bucks lying around it would be worth it. I really liked both Ursula and Rafael, and their relationship was so wonderful. I definitely did not see the end coming which was really fun!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for sending me an eARC of this book! The idea of finding the perfect significant other through science is a concept that I always find interesting in books/shows, and The Arc provided it with a fresh take. Ursula was a little too girl boss I'm not like other girls for my taste, but her personality did work well with Rafael. The whole book was actually a little too girl boss for me, but I liked it overall.

3,5 stars. I did enjoy this book. The only thing that bothered me was the main characters name. All I kept thinking about was Ursula from a the Little Mermaid. But the premise was enjoyable.

I liked the characters and the inventive storyline. What killed it for me though was the pacing. It was super slow in parts, and that left me uninterested in continuing, although I did finish. Overall it was just OK for me.

This was a pretty interesting book. Wouldn't it be great if a dating app could match you up to your perfect love? And then, wouldn't it be great if it actually worked? This book takes this idea and a match between Ursula and Rafael is made. They seemed like perfection together--until they weren't. This ARC was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. While this is a good book with some sly humor, the narrative kept me from forming a bond with the characters and thus I give it 3 stars.

The Arc follows Ursula and Rafael as they are looking to find love through a secretive and sophisticated match-making service called The Arc. The Arc promises to find someone's perfect partner complete with lifelong compatibility. I really wanted to like this book since the premise was intriguing to me. I had a hard time relating to the characters. At times the pacing was slow, so I skimmed a lot of this book. Some romance lovers will enjoy this book; however it wasn’t the right book for me. Thank you to NetGalley, and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The book opens with someone vomited in the back seat of a taxi. I knew I could go no farther. Thanks for the opportunity but that scene was so off-putting I could not even think about picking up the title again to read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. This book started out promising and had me intrigued from the cover and synopsis. Unfortunately, halfway through, I began to lose interest and the plot never picked back up. I think I expected something a tad bit more sinister than what I got, but ultimately, the ended felt both forced and rushed, and I was left unsatisfied in the end.

This was a thought-provoking and enjoyable read. I loved the humor and snark the author infused the story with. The concept was new and entertaining and the characters were real, flawed people... without the overwrought drama. It did take me awhile to read this book, but I'm glad I stuck with it to the end.

I recommend. Keep me engaged and interested, thank you for the advance chance to read this. I’ve already told family and friends about it

What an...interesting novel. Is it romance? Is it literary fiction? Is it science fiction? It's a bit all of the above. Its strength lies in the development of Ursula and Rafael as characters and the clarity of their voices and perspectives. I thought both of their points of view were really well fleshed out. My frustration was mainly when the book would veer into a subplot for a period of time. I think this was intended to make the characters more well-rounded and give them more of a backstory, but it was kind of distracting. Overall, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. I have a feeling it's going to be a polarizing one. If you're going in looking for kind of experimental contemporary fiction, you'll probably enjoy it. If you want the romance to be the main part of the story, you might be disappointed. I'm glad I read it, and I'm eager to hear what more folks think about it when it's published.

The concept of this debut by Tory Henwood Hoen intrigued me, and the story had a slight futuristic feel. Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my gifted e-copy.

SUMMARY: 35-year-old Ursula Byrne, VP of Strategic Audacity at a Manhattan branding agency, is tired of dating apps and all the strike-outs she’s had in the dating world. She signs up with The Arc, a specialized matchmaking service which promises to match her with her perfect partner. A weeks' worth of psychological, emotional and physical tests later, The Arc team matches her with lawyer Rafael Banks. Although their relationship starts off with a bang, they encounter hiccups along the way, making each of them question: in a world where you can enhance and perfect pretty much anything, does that include love?

THOUGHTS: I loved this author's outlook on our commercialised, consumer society and our incessant demand for everything in our lives to be the best it can be. This high-concept romance story peppered with satire made me laugh in some places, particularly the way some products are branded and what people do in the name of self-care--Henwood Hoen takes those things to another level. I did feel the amount of backstory threw off some of the pacing, and in some places the 3rd-person omniscient POV made the characters feel distant, but I can appreciate how much work Henwood Hoen did to create such complex characters. But I loved the main themes threaded through this book: how no amount of analysis or science can orchestrate lasting relationships nor keep them from succeeding. Relationships--and the people in them--are messy, real, and worth fighting for, no matter what the data says.

(I haven't included a link because I'll post it to my blog and IG closer to the pub date.)

Quirky and unique, refreshing to see main characters in the 30-40 age range. An innovative take on the lengths people will go to find true love. Overall it was a solid read with when pacing. A slow burn with a satisfying finish.

Would you spend $50K to be matched with your ultimate partner? No more failed first dates, swiping on apps, or breakup heartache? That is the premise behind the Arc, a high-end matchmaking service that is in the business of engineering perfectly-matched pairs.

Ridiculously inaccessible buy-in fee aside, this book oozed so much privilege that it made Ursula and Rafe, the fated match, pretty unlikeable. With their exclusive social club memberships and their casual cavorting with billionaires, this is certainly not your typical couple or romance. Nonetheless, the premise of the book made for interesting discussions about our dating habits and our autonomy in our decision-making processes. I enjoyed watching it play out!

Comps are a funny thing here. I haven't read Sally Rooney and have wanted to, but if her books are like The Arc, I might steer clear. This just wasn't successful for me.

It was promising. The blurb sounded cute and quirky: Thirty-five-year-old Ursula has had it with dating apps that just can't bring her the lasting relationship she wants. But a chance encounter at a spa alerts her to a secretive matchmaking service that promises The Real Thing. Though it comes with a hefty price tag, Ursula signs up and is matched with Rafael, a forty-two-year-old lawyer. As as their relationship unfolds, Ursula learns that true love is never a sure thing, no matter how much you paid for it.

Let me get one thing out of the way--I loved the writing. Tory Henwood Hoen has a really smooth style and the pages flowed. That's one of the things I appreciate most when reading, regardless of genre or age category.

But as far as the rest went, I found it extremely hard to relate to the main character, which is also a huge part in deciding to keep reading.

Much of the film and literary world seems to look down on rural and suburban America. But if this is the flipside, we're looking at pretentious coastal elites, if you want to get into stereotypes. I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough when we got to the "nouveau feminist wellness club," and that was only 2% of the way in. And I can't connect to a woman who would rather pay 40,000$ to meet her soulmate than get over her derision of square-toe shoes. I could never quite figure out if the author was mocking this type of person or embracing her. Besides that, I found the flow of the story a little off. There's a lot of description, but not much happens.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for making this a 'read now" selection for review.