49 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenThe True Love Experiment
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “Fizzy”
Fizzy is giving a well-rehearsed speech to the graduating class at the University of San Diego’s Revelle College, where she took creative writing classes. With her is her best friend’s husband, Dr. River Peña. Fizzy urges the graduating class to do what makes them happy. She tells them to live their lives like they’re in a romance novel. While she claims that romance is the fantasy of an individual person having significance, Fizzy herself realizes she’s lost her joy. She’s missing the romance plot in her own life.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Fizzy”
A year later, Fizzy and Jess are talking in a bar. Fizzy has been seeing a therapist, whom she hopes will help her start “writing, dating, feeling like [herself] again” (9). She’s lost interest in casual flings and worries that she will never experience authentic love. In turn, she feels this has dried up her romance writing brain. There’s a handsome man whom she tags as “Hot CEO” staring at her from across the bar, but she doesn’t feel the urge to do anything with him.
Dr. River Peña, Jess’s husband, comes on TV and describes the compatibility test, DNADuo, that his company Genetic Ally developed. Jess insists that the old Fizzy will come back.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Connor”
Connor sits at the same bar as Fizzy with his friend, Ash. He is dealing with bad news; Blaine Harrison, who runs the company where Connor makes documentaries on marine mammals and conservation, wants him to produce a reality dating show. Connor moved to San Diego to be near his 10-year-old daughter, Stevie, whom he shares custody of with his ex-wife, Nat. He doesn’t want to lose his job and go back to Los Angeles.
Connor notices a beautiful, black-haired woman sitting across the bar, but he is too worried about his new assignment to approach her. Ash says Connor needs a new angle. When River comes on TV talking about GeneticAlly, Connor gets an idea for his angle.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Connor”
Connor drives to his ex-wife’s house to pick up Stevie for the weekend. Stevie wants to go to a concert by her favorite band, Wonderland, but the San Diego show is sold out. Connor has a good relationship with his ex-wife and likes to tease her about her boyfriend, Insu, who is younger. Connor notices that Nat has shelves of romance books by Felicity Chen. He does a quick internet search and asks Nat about her, thinking it might make an interesting show if the contestant is a romance novelist searching for romance.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Fizzy”
Other meetings with producers have not panned out for her, so Fizzy doesn’t get too excited about her meeting with North Star. The tall, attractive man who meets her seems familiar to her, and Fizzy pegs him as the Hot Millionaire Executive archetype, someone who is boring and doesn’t really like women. When he begins discussing her books, she shifts to thinking of him as a Hot Brit, but she senses his condescension about the romance genre. When he offers her a role in a dating show, she thinks he’s joking, but he explains the premise: They would select the candidates based on DNADuo matches, and the audience would vote for her best match. Connor shows her a few possible contestants, including someone who turns out to be an ex-boyfriend, Evan. Fizzy quips that Evan had a Bart Simpson tattoo that she hated. In the end, she says she’s not interested.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Connor”
Blaine steps into Connor’s office to pressure him about finding the right fit for the show. Connor vents to his coworker, Trent, that Blaine told him to find someone “[f]emale-shaped and willing” (45).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Fizzy”
Fizzy comes back to the office to get her parking ticket validated and overhears Connor’s statement, thinking he is expressing his own opinion. She designates him as the villain and sees an opportunity to update TV executives and the show’s audience on her views about women and dating. She tells Connor she will sign a contract if he can meet her terms.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Connor”
Connor puts together a puzzle with Stevie while Nat serves them lunch. Nat says Connor has been acting snobby about the show and that his opinion about romance novels is based on assumptions about the genre. She asks why she should feel guilty about reading something that makes her happy.
Connor gets Fizzy’s list of demands about casting. He asks Nat what “cinnamon roll” means, and she laughs.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Fizzy”
Fizzy enjoys text exchanges with Connor, in which he questions her hero archetypes including Darcy, hot nerd, silver fox, and vampire.
She explains her demands to Jess while they are at their favorite coffee shop. One of them is that the dates take place in the real world and aren’t sequestered since that is how real dating happens. Fizzy realizes that if Connor accepts her terms and this goes forward, she’ll have to pretend she’s open to love.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Connor”
Fizzy arrives in Connor’s office, and he sees she is very confident. She admits she did a DNADuo test but didn’t check any of her matches. She asks Connor about his background and what he knows about her work. He admits he’s reading her latest novel and he finds it joyful, while his life has been sterile lately. Fizzy, addresses him as “Hot DILF” and says she wants the show to be delightful, irreverent, sexy, real, and relatable. She suggests that in the two months before they begin filming, they go on a quest together to rediscover joy.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Fizzy”
Fizzy talks with her pregnant sister, Alice, while she dresses for a book signing. She asked Connor to attend with her, and she is also bringing her father, who comes to all of her local signings. Her readers love him. Thinking about the show, Fizzy feels like she’s facing a scary, unknown future.
Prologue-Chapter 10 Analysis
The first-person, present-tense narration is conventional for the contemporary romance genre and lends an immediacy to the story’s action while bringing the reader close to the narrator’s thoughts and feelings. The alternating points of view enable the book to move Fizzy and Connor’s character arcs along corresponding emotional beats while also advancing the larger plot of their project together.
Jess and River remain consistent with their characters in the previous book, The Soulmate Equation, and are enjoying their own happily ever after. This creates cohesion within Lauren’s universe, creating familiarity for readers and setting expectations for a successful romance. Jess and River play supporting roles, and Fizzy emerges as a three-dimensional character with more backstory and depth. In the previous book, she played the part of the headstrong, playful best friend; in this novel, while she continues to be powerful, confident, successful, and very charming, she also feels vulnerable about her lackluster dating life and is struggling through a period of reduced creativity. This creates tension and stakes for her as her agent, publisher, and readers are all expecting the next book, and she is unable to write.
Fizzy’s sincerity and love for the romance genre are part of what’s causing her writer’s block, as she feels she can’t give her readers an authentic experience when she isn’t feeling romance or attraction herself. Her journey begins when she counsels the graduating college class to live their life like a romance and realizes she isn’t doing that herself. Despite—or perhaps because of—Fizzy’s struggles, Lauren’s love for the genre shines through. At several points, the text tackles negative Attitudes Toward the Romance Genre. For example, in answer to the common accusation that readers should feel guilty for enjoying narratives that have predictable endings and are full of clichés, conventions, and archetypes, Nat wonders why she should apologize for something that brings her joy. The idea that the central fantasy of romance is not simply sex but the idea of mattering to someone—and of being significant in one’s own life—is introduced immediately, and this becomes the standard by which the novel can be measured.
Connor’s reflections on these assumptions briefly make him the antagonist, as far as Fizzy is concerned, which is exacerbated by the misogynistic language she overhears him quoting from his boss. This introduces two romance tropes as well. Connor’s dismissal of romance novels makes him a Darcy, referring to Mr. Darcy’s snobbish attitude at the beginning of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This sets up his character arc into a more open-minded hero, as well as someone with hidden depths. Additionally, the misunderstanding in which Fizzy attributes sexist attitudes to him is a romance novel standard. Sometimes called “star-aligned lovers” (in contrast to “star-crossed lovers” like Romeo and Juliet, who have tragic fates), this trope centers on a pair who is destined to be together but gets off on the wrong foot. This builds tension and creates the story—without conflict, there is no story arc.
While creating believable tension and goals for the characters, these opening chapters also establish the things Fizzy and Connor have in common, which will draw them together. They both are very fond of a lively 10-year-old girl, showing a nurturing tendency. They are both committed to their jobs and in search of passion. They have strong friend and family bonds, which demonstrates established relationship skills. They each find each other attractive when they see one another at the bar, establishing The Power of Physical Attraction. However, that scene establishes that sexual attraction alone isn’t enough to draw them to another person; it will take getting to know the other’s personality and interests for a stronger desire to awaken. In romance novels, this desire is a sign that the other person is special and different from the partners who came before.
While it serves primarily as the device to structure the reality show, the DNADuo compatibility test raises the larger question of what attracts people to one another and what makes romantic relationships successful—important information in a genre about building convincing narratives about people experiencing love. The detail that Fizzy completed the DNADuo test but never checked the results foreshadows the reveal that Connor is actually her top match, reinforcing the idea that these two lovers are star-aligned.
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By Christina Lauren
