SEVEN PERCENT OF RO DEVEREUX By Ellen O’Clover

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O'Clover
Published by HarperTeen on 1/17/23
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 319
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.

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 soulmates. 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 soulmate 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. And as the app takes on a life of its own, Ro sees that it’s affecting people in ways she never expected—and if she can’t regain control, it might take her and everything she believes in down with it.

Short and Sweet Review

Ro Devereux made an app that can predict your future and its 93% accurate. The app is called MASH and it’s based on the childhood game (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House). The app was only supposed to be for a class project but soon it starts taking off in the App Store and Ro is eventually backed by a company. Ro just wants to prove herself so she becomes the main face of MASH and she uses the app to match with her soulmate which she thinks is wrong when the app tells her its Miller, a boy she used to be friends with until something went wrong. We see Ro and Miller try to make the best of their fake dating scenario, and we see how people are affected by the app and the choices Ro has to make about her future.

First of all, this book was amazing. I haven’t played MASH since I was in middle school so this book brought up some good memories. If I could I probably would download Ro’s version of MASH just to see what the future has in store. Ro is smart, I mean she made an app that has a 93% accuracy rate. Ro did have a lot of character development throughout this book, we see her trying to justify the decisions she makes, but in the end she does realize that other things are important and tries to right her wrongs. We also see Ro become obsessed with trying to make MASH work and trying to have everything go perfectly and this is why I appreciated her support system because they would bring her back to Earth and ground her.

Ro does get backed by a company who tries to get her noticed by a bigger software company, unfortunately Ro’s quest for success gives this company 50% ownership of the app and they start making questionable changes to the algorithm, but more on this later. Ro gets matched with Miller, who used to be her childhood best friend but since then they’ve gone their separate ways, now they have to fake their romance. This romance was cute, the slow burn and the eventually realization that they were meant to be was everything. At first these two didn’t even want to share a space together but by the end they stole my heart. After the company starts making changes to the algorithm we see people become affected by their MASH results and how their futures would change. Ro knows this isn’t what she intended when she first created the app and now she has to decide what to do with an app she thought would give her a chance in the tech world.

This is my first five star read of 2023 and for a lot of reasons. The amazing concept of having a childhood game become an app to predict your future, a smart tech driven main character, and one of the cutest romances I’ve read in a while. Definitely get your hands on this book and enjoy the the magic that O’Clover has created.