Kismet

Book excerpt: Black Mirror meets Bridget Jones in this whip-smart debut set in a world where the ultimate matchmaking app has redefined romance. Twenty-nine-year-old Anna is smart, vivacious, and in the midst of a complete existential meltdown. Sure, from the outside everything in her life seems to be going just fine: She has a decent job, a devoted BFF, and a lovely boyfriend named Pete with whom she is exactly 70% compatible, according to Kismet, the matchmaking app that everyone in Anna's world uses to find love. Still . . . isn't there supposed to be more to life than this? Should she settle for a secure and predictable existence with Pete, or risk everything for a life of passion and adventure? With true adulthood (the dreaded thirty) just weeks away, Anna secretly re-joins Kismet, and soon encounters Geoff, a dashing, forty-something journalist with whom she has a shockingly high compatibility score of 81. How can she not at least see where this goes . . . ? A funny and propulsive love story for our over-networked age, Kismet challenges us to take stock of how technology shapes our desires and what it means to "settle."