Author: Will McIntosh
Publisher: Orbit
Genre: Sci-fi, Romance, Dystopian
Blurb: (from goodreads) Years in the future, dead women in cryogenic dating farms await rich, lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms. There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a socially-awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.
Me: I. Am. Mindblown. Most futuristic novels share the same high technology and advanced systems and whatnot. But this view on future romance is something really new.
The Ups: First of all, this cover is sheer beauty. Not that you can see it or anything, but if you get the book, you'll see what I mean. And that's what made me pick up the book. The cover.
How can you not be mesmerized by the idea of dead women literally "frozen" and desperate for dates to keep them from being "thawed"? It's such a crazy, messed-up, yet somehow pretty possible idea. I just really enjoyed imagining this world. Will McIntosh really described it so well, and it was crazily fun to figuratively create the world inside my head. The thing is, his predictions are not so far-fetched. We, as humans, naturally have a fear of death. Or maybe not a fear, but a certain want to keep living, to fight with everything. And when a loved one dies, there are people desperate to bring them back to life. And that's what this book does. It shows how desperate people can be, how far we go for it.
I loved the romance. Love's hard. It takes a certain amount of effort, of...love. Love Minus Eighty really shows those struggles and yet the beauty of it in a masterly crafted futuristic world. Rob and Veronika and Winter and Mira, they were willing to fight through it, to showcase their flaws.
The ending wasn't perfect. Nathan and Veronika weren't perfectly happy, the romance between Rob and Winter worked out, but didn't come to a complete resolution. Mira hadn't quite been revived. There was a conclusion, but it also left me questioning, wanting answers.
The Downs: I feel like Mira didn't get enough time in the story. I think that she had the potential to display her pain, to showcase the desperateness of any bridesicle, and especially her struggle being gay but hiding it to stay "alive."
I get the entire concept of her getting "turned off" and then coming back to life, but I think that her story fascinated me and I would have wanted to see more of her character.
Rating: 4 kisses!
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