I really enjoyed this book. I adored the heroine, a super-smart nerdy woman who had a ways to go in the self-confidence department at the beginning.

Charlie Forrester is a Portland, Oregon-based data scientist, with a BS in computer science, a MS in psychology, and a PhD in something impressive (I’ve forgotten exactly). But since this isn’t a cover letter for a job application, I won’t worry about getting it exactly right. Suffice it to say that she’s a self-described geek who’s earned the title by digging into data and analyzing it. She created a matchmaking system that crawls men’s social media and general web presence to identify the relationship stage they’re ready for and then matches them with women who are looking for someone. It’s a computer program that came out of her PhD dissertation and she calls it Studies in Predictive Mating Behaviors Predicated on Social Media and Online Interaction, but her friends—to her chagrin—call it the Love Program.

Daniel Shawn is an investigative journalist who was burned while trying to expose a con artist impersonating a matchmaker. He ended up falling for the con himself, resulting in a career-stalling public outing. His reputation ruined, he’s returned to Portland to take a crummy job at a small tech journal—the only one that will hire him, apparently. Daniel’s scholarly achievements are in fine contrast to Charlie’s, too—he’s obviously smart enough, but he was a total failure in high school and (I think) may not have even gone to college.

Perhaps more importantly, Daniel is a childhood friend of Charlie’s who ditched her in high school, and she’s hated him since then. She even created a system called the Global Prick Positioning System to track him. Daniel is of course oblivious to the damage he caused. He doesn’t know why they lost contact, thinking it was just a thing that just happened naturally. Friends grow apart and so on. When they run into each other after he returns to Portland and meets up with his old friend Philip, who also happens to be one of the men in Charlie’s “data pool”, Charlie can’t believe it. She’s freaked out and decides to just avoid him even though he’s interested in rekindling their friendship.

In actuality, he’s interested in far more than friendship, but she doesn’t realize it. When weird circumstances make her accept a date from him, she thinks he’s just “boob stupid” because her friends make her dress at least a little provocatively, rather than in her normal hoodie and jeans. He is a little, but he also remembers always caring about her, all the way back when he was a kid. Because of Charlie’s situation, they continue to date, with her thinking it’s fake even though she’s starting to forgive him for his teenage transgressions. Daniel’s being genuine the whole time, so the black moment comes when he finds out why she went out with him in the first place. Happily, everything works out. Phew.

As I mentioned, I loved Charlie for being so different from a lot of romance heroines. It’s great when we see women who are accomplished on their own and don’t really need a man (and who don’t end up doing all the stupid compromising). Because Charlie doesn’t need a man, even though she finds that she wants Daniel, after all. And Daniel is a very likable guy, too. He’s always loved that Charlie is smart and geeky and admires her for it. You feel bad for him being a bit of a chump on his last assignment and the irony that he’s sort of fallen for something similar with Charlie makes you worry about how he’s going to react when he finds out. But this time it’s because of their background, not his own naivety.

The only thing that disappointed me a little with the book was that the secondary characters weren’t developed as much as they could have been (though there was a good range of characters peopling the story). Oh, and it was a little short—I wanted more of Charlie and Daniel.

Anyway, if you want to read a book that’s about a smart woman who really knows her stuff (and Charlie does because the author does—she works in the field), I can’t recommend this book enough.