Q*pid
Author: Xavier Mayne
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
American release date: August 28, 2018
Format/Genre/Length: E-book/M/M Contemporary Romance/310 pages
Overall Personal Rating: ★★★★
Reviewer: Julie Lynn Hayes
Archer is the AI at the dating service Q*pid, and he has his own ideas about how matches can be made. Veera, his programmer, is frustrated that he isn’t listening to her and insists on going his own way. She’s on thin ice as it is with Archer at work, and not everyone at the dating service is convinced of Archer’s ability to make working matches. But when he proposes changing the protocol that determines which gender the clients are looking for, making them open to more possibilities, they are determined he and Veera have lost their collective minds. Due to a misunderstanding, Archer proceeds with his plan, and the results…
Drew Larsen is working on his PhD, and his dating life is fraught with strong and strange women. It’s not surprising that none of his relationships last. He finds more pleasure in the company of his elderly neighbor, Mrs. Schwartzmann, who has more tall tales than Carter has little liver pills. Fox Kincade is a very successful man in all ways but one—finding the right woman. But never fear, he has a spread chart for everything, and since joining the dating service Q*pid, he is determined to find Ms. Right, as long as he follows his own rules of dating. He feels pressured, though, because he is the last of his group to find their partner. His standards are high. He is determined only to date women who match him at least with an 80% rating or higher.
When Fox and Drew are each notified of a match exceeding 99%, they are overjoyed! But that joy soon turns to confusion and dismay when they open the match to find themselves looking into another man’s face! The dating service, once it discovers what Archer has done, quickly rescinds the matches, but too late for Fox and Drew, who have to decide to do with this information.
Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith…
Q*pid is a well-written, romantic story about love and possibilities, based on the understanding that love is not limited to nor restricted by body parts. By what matches where or what goes where. Love is soul-deep. You just have to be open to it.
Xavier Mayne writes well, and he draws his characters as people we can easily like and believe in. The secondary characters—Drew’s neighbor, Mrs. Schwartzmann, and Fox’s bff Chad and his wife—are delightful people you would really like to spend time with. From the beginning, I knew the outcome was predetermined—it is a romance, after all—but the journey to happiness is well worth taking, and the ending is satisfying on many levels. Don’t forget to bring plenty of Kleenex.
All in all, this was a good read, one I would recommend if you like two men finding each other when they think they want Ms. Right. And it also goes to prove you don’t have to have all the same interests to be attracted to someone.
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