This was really touching, especially towards the end. I felt that the beginning was kind of slow, but I really enjoyed this overall.

While I enjoyed the premise of this book, I didn't love that it was so focused on her life in college. I don't consider that to truly be young adult. Love a gay awakening though, so 2 stars.

What a beautiful, beautiful book. But it is not what you might think it is. While yes it is about a girl who creates an algorithm that pairs you with your perfect mate. But more than that it’s about grief & the person grief makes you.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

Wow, I really liked this. A beautiful story that really was about all sorts of love. I definitely want to read more from Christina Li in the future.

This was so good. I really loved the whole concept, I was so taken by the romance and the friendships and just all of it. The whole algorithm of it all had me on my toes from beginning to end. I really just enjoyed it all so much. I loved the main character, she was layered and just so interesting. I had a great time reading this. I truly cannot wait to read more books by Christina Li and I'll definitely be rereading this one.

Oh wow I am truly in love with this book. Grace Tang is a college freshman who invents an algorithm for her math class that pairs people with their perfect romantic match on campus. As much as she wants love to be able to fit into linear code, she learns to embrace that love and identity are beautifully messier than that.

I heard this had similar vibes as Netflix’s The Half of It and I totally agree! It had endearing, cringe-worthy growing up moments, supportive and kind friendships that grow with the individuals, budding queer nerds, and tender loving parents that are willing to learn for the sake of their kid.

Also, I am a real sucker for perfectly laid life plans getting blown up by gay feelings. And I have a soft spot for (and I just might relate to a little bit) type-A baby gays who have to come to terms with their messy humanity when they realize feelings can’t fit in a perfect box. I would read that character arc all day long! But even if that particular trope isn’t your thing, this book hits all the right notes of a perfect queer YA with equal parts self-discovery, sweet romance, and very real exploration of grief and family expectations.

I am so serious when I say this is the perfect YA book. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to immediately read it again as soon as you finish for the first time. It made me cry in the middle of a flight, and it also made me think a little bit too much about my relationship with my parents. Christina is truly a master of her craft, and I need her next book immediately.

3.5 stars

TL;DR: True Love and Other Impossible Odds was a solid debut. I loved the concept of this story and while the writing may have suffered from too much telling and not enough showing, I think the author did a good job addressing the heavier themes and with the overall execution. It's a relatable and down-to-earth story about discovering yourself and shedding peoples' expectations of you, choosing your path, growing up and finding love. It's a college story that many will probably relate to, young adults and adults alike. Although I often felt emotionally disconnected from Grace, seeing her grow and find peace with who she is and loves was a wonderful journey.

While the cover initially piqued my interest, the synopsis convinced me to it and though it's not a new favourite, I'm glad it came on my radar. The story has its fun and relatable uni life moments but also delves into heavier subjects which I think the author explores well. Grace with her high self-expectations, sheltered life and controlling parents, is easy to empathise with and is a character I saw myself and my friends in, too. When we meet her, she's still coming to terms with major losses in her life. She's a quintessential "good Asian girl" who doesn't party or rebel but studies maths every moment she can and follows her parents' rule of law by the book. I love how filial piety was explored through her relationship with her parents and she slowly learns to shed that "old skin" to embrace who she wants to be. What I found refreshing was that the author talked about Grace's faith and her relationship with religion—it's not a subject that I often see in the YA/NA I read and it made her character feel more rounded.

The algorithm storyline was interesting and I enjoyed how the author explored what it means to fall in love and find your person. I mean, how ideal would it be to input all your information into a database and be matched with your perfect person? As Grace learns though, love is not that simple or linear and compatability does not equal love. After all, how can you truly know what you want or who your perfect person is when you don't truly know yourself? Her journey of self-discovery is slow at times, but it's a worthwhile journey to realisation, especially once she processes the impact of her relationships with her mother and her faith on her worldview. I also thought the romance between Grace and Julia was sweet, even if their overall arc started as enemies to tentative co-workers, good friends and eventually lovers. The ending was super sweet and very happy and I'm glad these beans got the HEA they both deserved! :)

The main thing that made it difficult for me to enjoy this more was how emotionally disconnected I felt for most of it. The writing wasn't bad but was mostly tell and not enough show. We're told that characters do or think this and that which removes a lot of the emotional aspect. I expected a story like this with as much turmoil, growing pains and grief to have carried a lot more emotional weight, and as an emotional reader, I expected to get a bit teary. Instead, I was disappointed to find that aspect missing from the story. I do think it's still a worthwhile and relatable read though and I "turned" the last page with a satisfied smile on my face.

what a perfect book! I absolutely loved this celebration of all forms of love, which felt so true to the college experience. perfect for those who want a romance that’s also emotional and also focuses on other thing

i realized awhile back that i had access to this arc still, and upon seeing its publishing date, i immediately got to reading it, and i finished in around 48 hours. it’s a super quick read, but it was enjoyable and the pacing worked well for the story it was telling. i liked grace as a main character, and i liked how realistic her relationships with the people around her were, whether that was her roommates or her coworkers or her project groupmates. i’m also just a sucker for any YA lit that’s set in college (maybe i’m biased) and i thought that for the most part, that setting was really used to this story’s advantage and in a realistic way. i can’t speak on a lot of her journey and background, but i liked seeing her make it through all that was thrown her way. i also liked the flashbacks that were sprinkled throughout, and i thought they were super effective in their goal of showing rather than telling. it was a fun way to get to connect the dots as a reader!
my only gripe with this book is that its romance seems to take a hard pivot at a certain point, and that felt super jarring to me, but i think that’s a me thing more than anything else? it didn’t take me out of the story, but everything else afterwards felt noticeably different from the first chunk of the novel.

What a gorgeous, nuanced contemporary romance. Li's YA explores queer sexuality, complex and loving family dynamics, friendship, and—of course—the lack of predictability in true love, and just how wonderful those surprises along the way are. I ate up every chapter, loved the friend group and the love interest, and felt so many of the scenes in my soul. Adored it.

“But I am no longer that person. I can’t be. I’m smarting, and I feel raw, but at last it is all out there. At least the truth is laid between us and that is all I can give: my honesty.”

Grace Tang has done the impossible, and only in her first semester of college: she has invented an algorithm that can solve for true love. Half of campus is dating their algorithm-matched partner, and Grace herself is matched with Jamie, a cute boy she literally ran into at the beginning of the semester. There are skeptics, led by Grace’s irritable coworker, Julia, who despises the algorithm so much that she wrote a scathing op-ed about it for their university’s newspaper. Grace doesn’t mind the disbelievers, though, especially when she and Jamie officially become a couple. However, the algorithm’s success doesn’t help Grace heal from the anguish of senior year. Still mourning her mother’s passing, she heads home every weekend to keep her father company in their quiet, grief-drenched home. Somehow, she ends up spending more time with Julia, who might not be so terrible after all, with her dark eyes and comforting presence. With her world constantly shifting around her, will Grace be able to survive her freshman year of college, and also, just maybe, crack the code for true love?

Christina Li first caught my eye in the anthology Study Break: 11 Tales from Orientation to Graduation, with her short story “Begin Again,” a piece about two girls falling for each other as they work on a group project during their last semester of college. So when I heard about her YA debut, I knew I had to tune in!

I’m particularly fond of coming-of-age stories set in college, a time that can often feel lonely, disconcerting, and scary. It’s comforting to read a book where the characters face the woes of university and, despite the odds, end up okay in the end. A lot of Grace’s struggles felt so relatable: she’s stressed about making friends, worried about asking her professor for a letter of recommendation, and has to deal with the horror that is group project conflicts. It is no wonder that Grace seeks solace in her logical algorithm—after the unpredictable grief of senior year, and now the chaos of college, she wants something certain. Even though I have to admit that I was skeptical of the algorithm from the start, I couldn’t help but root for its success, especially because Jamie seemed like her perfect match! Julia does steal the spotlight when she is introduced (especially if you like brooding love interests!), and the slow(ish) burn between Grace and Julia is so fun to read. While Grace’s romantic pursuits are undeniably a key part of her growth, I think the highlight of the book is her gradual realization that she doesn’t have to pretend to be her immigrant parents’ perfect daughter anymore, because in reality, she hasn’t been that girl in a long time. In particular, Grace is troubled by memories of her late mother being incredibly homophobic to her estranged best friend, which leads to her wondering if her mother would’ve loved this newly discovered version of herself. This complex grief seemed like the hardest part of the book to write, but I think Li did a wonderful job of poignantly rendering the love Grace feels for her mother, despite it all. I couldn’t recommend True Love and Other Impossible Odds more—it is the college coming-of-age story of my dreams!

When inventing a dating app to find love... the last thing you expect is to fall for the wrong person. When college freshman Grace Tang comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners, it blows up and goes viral. Yet when Grace meets Julia, her prickly coworker at the library who doesn't believe in Grace's algorithm, an unlikely relationship begins to bloom. Grace is still dealing with the grief of her mother's death, worrying about her father, losing her best friend, and her own sexuality. When all Grace craves is the solid and consistency of equations and numbers, can she go off formula and find love? This story deals with healing after the loss of a loved one and opening yourself up to others. Grace is so concerned with being the perfect daughter for her family, with trying to be there to make sure her father is okay, that she loses a bit of herself in the process and closes herself off. As she grows and learns, she begins to open herself up to friendship and love again and I think it was just a really sweet college coming of age story.

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books | Quill Tree Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

This book is honestly one of my favorite books I have read so far this year. There is a lot of exploration of the desire to be the perfect daughter for immigrant parents, while struggling with trying to figure out if you even know who you are, all during the tumultuous time of being a freshman and college. I was pleasantly surprised by how much more depth this book had as it didn’t shy away from topics of grief, or feelings of inadequacy our main character feels. Being alongside the journey with her as she starts to not only realize she maybe isn’t exclusively into boys like she thought she was, and seeing how she starts to push her own boundaries and establish herself as a person was so cathartic. I’ve been nonstop raving about it to my friends, and I can’t wait for it to be published.

This also had a lot of elements that felt similar to Alice Oseman’s ‘Loveless’, and made me so proud of our main character for the growth she was able to have. Definitely recommend if you like queer lit, coming of age, and stories centering children of immigrant parents.

One of the things that Grace really wants to do is to be part of the Math Summer Program she wants to apply for in her college. And when a group project is her potential way to get in, she jumps in the chance to create an algorithm on who to fall in love with in her college campus. But she's learning that falling in love might not only involve the numbers in her algorithm.

From the get go. you can tell that Grace is someone who's so reserve that there might be a reason why. And from the get go we learn why from the state of her family life, academic life, friendship life, and college life.

This was such a roller coaster of emotions. And one of the things that I loved most about this book was how love was experienced, felt, and shared. It was amazing to see Grace not just navigate about falling in love, but also how she navigates the pieces in her life that she left behind.

This was such a good book about rediscovering and learning about one's self. And knowing there's so mary things to still discover. This was a really good book and quite emotional too.