Love, Decoded
By: Jennifer Yen
Published Year: 2022
Pages: 320
Publisher: Razorbill
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this novel.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): High school junior Gigi Wong strives to be the best: the top student, the perfect friend, and the ideal daughter. But it’s tough when there's always someone who is just a little bit better. With college applications looming, she can't help but worry that she won't make the cut. Thankfully, her best friend Kyle never fails to find the right words--and the perfect bowl of ramen--to cheer her up.
After her teacher, Ms. Harris, announces she'll be nominating students for an app writing contest, Gigi is determined to be picked. After all, first prize is an exclusive tech internship, sure to make her application stand out. There's only one problem: she doesn't have a winning program. It isn't until transfer student Etta admits she's struggling to fit in at Superbia that Gigi stumbles on an idea. She'll use her coding skills--and the matchmaking experience she's gotten from weekends with Auntie Rose--to create a friend matching app! Etta will meet new people, and Gigi will guarantee her acceptance into college. It's foolproof.
What Gigi doesn't expect is for her app to go viral around school. Soon, she finds herself at the center of a scandal—and at odds with both Etta and Kyle. Can Gigi fix what went wrong, or will her desire to be perfect cost her the people she cares about most?
First Impressions
I’m a sucker for a cartoon cover and I love the picture of a young woman in front of a computer. The summary sounded very cute and I definitely was intrigued by a high-schooler who creates a matchmaking app for friends but when it goes wrong. Because of that, I completely missed that this is a modern retelling of Emma!
What I thought
I enjoyed a lot of aspects of this book, even though I wasn’t the target audience, but there were parts that didn’t feel fully fleshed out to me. Maybe if I had read Emma it would’ve felt better, but I haven’t and I also don’t feel like that should be a requirement to understand a retelling. I mean, I know the story of Clueless, but this didn’t even remind me of that.
Gigi is a high school junior who shadows her Great Aunt as a matchmaker. She decides to turn her aunt’s matchmaking questions into an app to help to make her life easier and realizes that she loves coding. When her school has a contest to create an app that can get them into a bigger contest for an internship, she creates an app that uses her matchmaking knowledge to create friendships. However, it ends up biting her in the butt later on.
Gigi is super rich. Like, really really rich. This confused me at first because I don’t think it was laid out very well. It wasn’t until I was well into the book where they describer her house as having 6 floors and an elevator (in New York City! Does this even exist???) where I realized how rich she was. There was a mention at the beginning of the story about her having a driver pick her up from school but it’s mostly phrased like “Fernando can pick you up from school” and I don’t think I thought much past it. Since this is essential to the story, I would’ve appreciated if it had been made a bit more clear.
I enjoyed all of the characters in this story. In fact, Gigi might’ve been my least favorite. Her best friend Kyle also could’ve been fleshed out a little bit more, but I loved how he called Gigi out on her bull and also was funny. Etta was maybe my favorite of the friend characters. She’s a bit rough around the edges at first, of course, but her personality is true gold. I love that Gigi decides to make the matchmaking app specifically for her because she’s having a hard time making friends as the new kid in school.
The side of the story that was fleshed out was the STEM side. Gigi’s love of coding and matchmaking and the combination of the two was so fun. I loved seeing a strong and smart female character in high school. She knew what she wanted and worked hard to get it, even if she did go a bit over the top.
This book is very fun and inspiring, but had a few misses for me. I don’t feel like she had quite the heart of gold that Cher in Clueless did, so some of her observations and comments came off a bit rough. I liked seeing how everything was going to play out and enjoyed Gigi’s growth throughout the story. I flew this one an thought it was cute, but it wasn’t one that I loved. I think I’ll forget about it as the year goes on.