Ayesha at Last and The One - February CC Book Club Selection

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They are both what I think of as bon bon books. Easy to consume, not much nourishment. I think both books suffered from trying to stuff too much social commentary into their slim plots. Even if the reviews had not said so, Ayesha gives its hand away early on with direct quotes from Jane Austen’s original. I found these ended up breaking the fourth wall and being more annoying than clever. I was surprised how much of the Shakespearean mistaken identity plot was also integral to the proceedings. In some ways, I think if we’d just had Shakespeare without Austen it would have been a better book.

The One kept me interested throughout though I thought putting Christopher into the mix was a bit over the top. I found it hard to believe that he could possibly be changed by love. The Nick and Alex plot did not bother me. I think they were both bisexuals, who had suppressed and/or had not met any guys they were attracted to. I think they were a DNA match. (I think that was the author’s intention - whether it has any basis in reality I don’t know, but I don’t think it was intended to be offensive. I think the author wanted five different as possible situations.)

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I did not enjoy the books very much although both were quick reads.
I have retained little of either book to have an extensive discussion.

The One promised to be a good suspense tale but didn’t deliver on it — it ended up being predictable and hackneyed. I also found the story of the two straight men finding true love as unbelievable and somewhat offensive. The biggest issue I had was how easily characters gave up on existing relationships and ties for the genetically matched arbitrary one. We are to accept that ‘true love knows no boundaries’ and in time it will end racism and discrimination. The writing style was unmemorable and to say it plainly just bad at times.

Ayesha at Last is a syrupy love story but also held far too many religious references for my comfort. I like reading about other cultures and religions but I don’t want to know quite so many details in a book that I’m reading for pleasure. Overall, the tone of the writing was light but the Jane Austen vibe was missing for me. If it hadn’t been pointed out as a take on P & P, I would not have reached that conclusion by myself.

The biggest takeaway for me from this pairing is the philosophical difference between the East and the West on falling in love.

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Whew, I was worried that I was the only one unimpressed with the books and that all of you would have thought provoking literary impressions that I completely missed. :wink:

I read both books over a month ago so have little memory of specifics. Here’s what I remember.

The One - a very interesting premise and I thought the characters were well drawn. Is there one person that we are genetically perfect for? But about halfway through I thought, this is getting ridiculous. And when I finished I thought the book read like a television mini-series, with dramatic chapter endings and scenes designed for filming, not reading. Then I read that it’s being adapted by Netflix. So there you go.

Ayesha - I more or less liked it but don’t remember much of the plot or characters, to be honest. My two strongest memories: first, the Pride and Prejudice references were blatantly and awkwardly inserted. And second, the cultural references to food, dress, and customs did not flow naturally to me. At times is seemed more like an educational book on Indian life and assimilation or lack thereof in America.

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I liked the books. I didn’t love them, but they were quick reads and did give me some food for thought.

I read The One last. I didn’t think I would like it. The story I was most interested in was Jade’s. It showed the dichotomy of “love” from the DNA standpoint and a “falling in love” standpoint. Jade and Kevin came together because of the supposed DNA Match. They fell in love because they got to know each other through texting and phone calls. That is the way things normally happen.

I did like Ayesha too. I think the author tried to force the P & P thing too much. I did find the matchmaking interesting from a cultural standpoint. Arranged marriages have been a part of history probably since the beginning of the human race. That they exist today as much as they do is surprising to me. I do wish that the author would have had a glossary for some of the religious and cultural words and phrases that were unfamiliar.

The question to ask is would you take the DNA Match test? I wouldn’t today after being married for 45+ years. When I was 20, possibly.

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Ditto – I wouldn’t take the DNA match today.

But how weird, to take a test, assume you’re a match, and just fall into the relationship. Almost makes trying to be nice, flirt, etc., not necessary.

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I read Ayesha first. It was okay. I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend, but I don’t feel bad that I read it. It was an easy read and a peek at a different culture. I thought it took too long for the truth to come out that Ayesha wasn’t Hafsa. Hafsa and Khalid were members of a mosque in a Muslim communty. A community that seemed to have many members who liked to gossip. Hafsa’s father was a big donator to the mosque. She was of marrying age. I have a really hard time believing no one would have known what Hafsa looked like.

I didn’t like The One at all. I read it only to finish it.

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@Caraid i had the opposite reaction. Ayesha was ok but predictable but I thought the premise of The One interesting if flawed. We’ve been married almost 45 years. I don’t think we would have been matched but the differences make life interesting. Although, the matches in The One were not always compatible on the surface. Why would the genetic match match disparit personalities?

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I found The One to be hard to believe because they all ended up in the same area and matched. There was one explanation something about similar experiences, but I was not buying it. It was a little too creepy for me but I liked it.

Ayesha was interesting to me. Of course the ending was predictable. The idea of love as mentioned above was interesting. But, most interesting to me was the mention of money. Americans are in general IMO not comfortable talking about money.

I really feel that Ayesha would make a good high school play.

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@Singersmom07 When I first read the topic of The One, I thought it would be great. DNA matching is really a fascinating topic for a novel. It just never reached its potential for me.

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I loved the premise of The One. It felt just close enough to reality to be the perfect kind of contemporary sci-fi.

Right now, you can submit DNA to Ancestry.com to find your relatives (“Connect with your people in new ways – See a match list”): AncestryDNA® | DNA Tests for Ethnicity & Genealogy DNA Test
And I bet one day, you’ll be able to submit your DNA to Match.com or eHarmony, if only to be sure you aren’t accidentally paired with your sperm donor half sibling.

Marrs took his brilliant idea and created something that in the end was just campy fun. One story line was sillier than the next, if you picked it apart.

He relied a lot on death as a plot device: Amy kills Christopher, Christopher kills everybody, Ellie kills Matthew, Kevin dies of cancer, Sally dies in childbirth. Richard is already brain dead, but apparently comes out of his vegetative state at the end, at least long enough to clasp his baby’s hand.

Mandy and Richard had to be a true DNA match, because there is no other explanation for her intense desire for this man she never met. His life seems to have been spent as a selfish playboy and the video Mandy found on his old phone was definitely one of my “ew” moments. Another oddity about that storyline was the final reveal that Richard and Chloe were both stolen babies, snatched by Pat decades earlier and raised as her own. Seemed completely unnecessary to the plot.

The serial killer storyline (with Christopher’s ability to return to th scene of every crime) had enough holes to drive a truck through. And in Jade’s story, she is fooled into thinking Kevin is her DNA match because she hadn’t looked closely enough at the email to see that the first names were different: “The notification had come through during her lunch break at work, and she’d been so thrilled that she’d paid for her link’s details without giving much attention to his name.” She travels all the way to Australia, but apparently never re-reads her match email to confirm the name of her soulmate.

Yet I truly enjoyed all this! I just settled in and embraced the nonsense. How can I explain it? It was like watching “Sharknado” with a big bowl of popcorn.

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@Mary13 And I bet one day, you’ll be able to submit your DNA to Match.com or eHarmony, if only to be sure you aren’t accidentally paired with your sperm donor half sibling.

I hope they can do this now :flushed:

I appreciate these selections for the distraction they provided during this historic pandemic and stressful political times.
Easy, light “popcorn” crunch.
I read these so long ago, I’m struggling to remember details.

One of the things I thought during reading “The One” was that Marrs, was not glorifying online dating services, in fact, his characters feared their matches would weigh 400lbs, but he quickly introduces, the serial killer, the attractive, normal looking murderer.

Marrs is gay, and happily married, ( had to google this after reading) and, he portrayed the shock of the match, with sensitivity, making me believe it was one of the true matches.

The best part of the book, was being left wondering which matches were legit, and which ones were “self fulfilling” prophecies”. And, this is why I would recommend this sometimes goofy book to my friends.

Plus the “edge -of -the -seat”, what will these sociopaths end up doing next, hence my comparison to Gone Girl,

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In the end though I think my favorite story line was Jade’s despite the unbelievableness of the name switcheroo. She was a genuinely sweet person as was Kevin. I liked that she just dropped everything and flew half way around the world to grab happiness. I liked that she was willing to put Richard first despite realizing they probably weren’t really matched. I disagree that they were a true DNA match, since she feels nothing for him once she actually meets him. I think they had a deep friendship based on their correspondence.

I didn’t think a woman would ever write that scene where Mandy loves the sex video, but probably I’m just too old and old-fashioned. Because yes ewwww.

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Fascinating. I don’t know if this clarifies things for me as regards the Nick-Alex match, or makes it more bewildering, but I think the latter.

Consider this: What if the genders had been reversed? That is, imagine if Marrs had written a story where two contented gay men, with absolutely no interest in women ever, had been planning marriage and preparing to start a family; then, one of the men is DNA matched with a woman, who is so appealing that he turns straight. I don’t think that would have gone over too well with an enlightened public. The Nick-Alex relationship is basically doing the same thing and it bugged me.

I agree. The book was like a mash-up of Austen and Shakespeare—trying to be both The Comedy of Errors and Pride and Prejudice rolled into one, but it didn’t really work.

It was hard for me to form any kind of reader attachment to the lovebirds.
Both Khalid and Ayesha were too passive. I understand the desire to placate those we love, but Khalid was too old to have let his mother run his life for so long, especially considering what a poor role model she was. As for Ayesha, I don’t know how she put up with so much nonsense from Hafsa, who was the worst. (And I didn’t really buy Hafsa’s 11th hour remorse.)

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@Mary13 one of the men is DNA matched with a woman, who is so appealing that he turns straight.

I think the engaged gay man (Nick I can’t remember) realized he was gay, when he felt the magical “spark”, I didn’t believe he “turned gay”, he accepted who is really was all along.

I thought Marrs was allowing his character to reveal his true nature,

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First: I found both books easy to read and as @Mary13 points out: “They make you want to find out what happens next, which is more than can be said for some “better” books I’ve tried to slog my way through.” We’ve read duos that haven’t managed to accomplish that; anyone remember Reading Lolita in Tehran as one of our two discussion books - ugh.

Thoughts on The One: At first, I didn’t like the characters enough to like the book. However, I got into the flow of the book and started wanting to know the outcome of the matches. I like how Marrs delineated the book into five characters - five chapters and then does it over again. I’m not sure I could have read a whole book about any of the five. So …

Mandy/Richard - I’m thinking DNA match. A DNA match does not preclude life experiences. I just figured Pat (psychopathic mother) had screwed Richard into unlikeable. I took the twist at the end - that neither Richard or Chloe had her DNA - a nod to the fact that maybe had Pat never entered the picture Richard would have been a good DNA match for Mandy. However, Mandy drove me crazy with her neediness (umm, stupidity). I was always glad to move on.

Christopher/Amy - Least favorite. I never believed … Quoting Mary once again: “The serial killer storyline (with Christopher’s ability to return to the scene of every crime) had enough holes to drive a truck through.” I thought the two were not a true match until the end and then the fact that Amy can murder with the same impunity and care as Christopher. Umm, most couldn’t take that step. The two are more alike than expected. Thank goodness they didn’t pair up.

Jade/Kevin/Mark: Favorite - Everyone here is a good person trying to do the right thing. Jade knows she doesn’t feel the “in love” spark but she’s grown to love Kevin as a friend. I figured out early that Mark is Jade’s DNA match.

Nick/Alex - another DNA match. Another friend and I discussed this book and came to the conclusion that neither man is gay but the strong pull of DNA for that particular other person overrode all else.

Ellie/Tim - obviously not. I kept thinking of the Bad Blood scenario and expecting to find that Ellie learns the technology doesn’t work as advertised but just keeps chugging along.
And keep chugging along she does.

Hmm … DNA matching … a scary thought for already married couples. I was married 41 years/dated for three before that. Were we soul mates - no. Were we happily married - enough. Would DNA testing have thrown a bomb into the marriage? Probably.

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Both were good beach reading, which is a plus since I haven’t been near a beach for over a year now. For me, the question is not so much about a DNA match, but love itself. Is love at first sight real?

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I enjoyed the diversion of both books. I also thought they could be good reading for the beach or airplane … both distant memories during covid. Since I have a of time being retired during Covid, the last months I was also reading other books …nonfiction (Obama bio and a book about ecology/Climate for church zoom book club) & “The Women in the Castle”, (historical novel WW2 for a new zoom book club with friends). So these were fun change of pace.

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The One sounds interesting…will read it and check back on all the interesting-sounding discussion! :slight_smile:

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I’m able to tolerate the books better as I read the points y’all are making. @jerseysouthmomchess I do see that the books were a much-needed distraction at this time and it wasn’t at all an onerous task to get through them. The pages were easily turned as I did want to know how the stories proceeded.

As mentioned by others, in both books the writing wasn’t very good and the main characters were passive, sometimes annoying, and often just unlikeable.

Ayesha… was too much of mishmash of other successful book plots and the frequent quotations grated rather than improved the story. I just couldn’t see Darcy in Khalid and for sure no Eliza in Ayesha. It could’ve worked as a book better without those often forced comparisons. She did a good job of continuing the story through conversation but got mired in the details.

In The One, I struggled with the Christopher/Amy storyline throughout. At times so implausible and others just unbelievable. After so many murders, how is Amy the only person to make the connection, even granting her special access to Christopher’s life? And the final step she took was inconceivable to me: To kill Christopher (and stop his murder spree) rather than turn him over to the police because it wouldn’t look good for her that she had been fooled by him for so long.
I liked the Jade/Kevin/Mark storyline. Jade and Mark tried to rise above their ‘natural mating instincts’ so that Kevin’s last days would be happy.
The Nick/Alex storyline is still incongruous. If you are who you are intrinsically, then a genetic match will only confirm that. So their match would make sense only if the two were bisexual. The concept that two (non-conflicted) straight people would find true love in a gay relationship doesn’t. Marrs alludes to this when he says that the two aren’t sexually attracted to each other and that they have to work at it (implying lack of inclination to be be in a sexual relationship).

On a separate note, I started on the The Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner and I so enjoyed myself. I wish I had found it earlier when my son and I used to compete to be the first to finish reading. He no longer reads any fantasy (or even fiction):disappointed:. Thanks @ignatius and @mathmom.

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Very helpful summary and analysis of each relationship, I really needed this reminder. Thanks