Wow, Im thoroughly impressed. I never would have guessed that this story would turn out to be that good, especially when one considers the amount of confusion I had to wade through in the beginning.
There is an amount of five storylines to follow, five peoples lives and how they are affected by Match Your DNA. I have to admit Im not that good at remembering names, so it was quite difficult for me to have so many characters thrown at me at once with no visible connection between them other than that they all try to find their one true love based on the DNA test send in to this mysterious company the story is built upon. It helps a lot that the switches of point of view are always in the same order: Mandy, Christopher, Jade, Nick and Ellie. The chapters are very short, you merely ever get a glimpse of the persons current situation and you have to wait four chapters to continue with their path. Once you untangled who is who and who they belong to, that concept becomes quite addictive because there is, quite often, a little cliffhanger or bombshell at the end of each section. Put together with the short chapters, you just cant stop reading until you know how the one characters story continues.
The idea of a gene which shows who your ideal partner is, the one and only true love, it fascinated me. Who wouldnt feel tempted to try that? Arent we all looking out for the one we can spend the rest of our lives with? What if it were as easy as a mouth swab send off to be tested? It sounds too good to be true, like something only happening in a fairytale, because there are bound to be consequences, right? The hell there are and the book presents them quite well, in my opinion.
For me The One resembled a puzzle, well, five puzzles, really. Not only you had to piece the different puzzles together to get the picture of one of the characters, but you had to find the puzzle pieces which would connect everything. Only then you would be able to see the picture as a whole. That was a lot of fun. I liked it very much to get to know the characters slowly, to get to know all their little and not so little (dirty) secrets that, more often then not, took me by surprise. The most intrigued I was when I found out that one of the main charcters is a psychopathic serial killer. Try to imagine your test result tells you that you are matched with someone like that. The fact that said psychopath is matched to a policewoman, well, you can imagine the excitement to read about such an unusual lovestory.
After some difficulties with the maltitude of charcters involved, I was able to get into the story and simply couldnt get out of it until I got the whole picure, until every single secret was uncovered. In the end, it definitely has been worth the struggles in the beginning. Im left now with a lot to think about, e.g. if it is worth it to search for the one obsessively when he or she might be already by your side. So, I will let you find out your own answer to that by recommending to read this book.
