A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab, and soon, you’ll be matched with your perfect partner—the one you’re genetically made for.

That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance, and love.

Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.” They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets, and some are more shocking than others…

A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One, is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake made from a family recipe with a long history and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel tells how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Horton Hears a Who is a children's book written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss. It was published in 1954Elephant Horton finds a speck of dust floating in the Jungle of Nool. Upon investigation of the speck, Horton discovers the tiny city of Who-ville and its residents, the Whos, which he can hear but cannot see. Horton forms a friendship with the mayor of Who-ville, Ned McDodd, and promises to transport Who-ville to safety. However, Horton encounters opposition from his jungle neighbors, who don't want to believe in the existence of Who-ville. 

Always and Forever, Lara Jean is a 2017 novel by American author Jenny Han. It is the third and final installment of the To All the Boys I've Loved Before series. Now in her final year of high school, Lara Jean Song Covey is excitedly looking forward to attending school with her boyfriend, Peter Kavinsky, at the University of Virginia (UVA). Peter has been accepted early on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. When acceptance letters come in, Lara Jean learns she has been rejected. After being wait-listed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Lara Jean decided to go with William and Mary with the plan of transferring to UVA after freshman year. However, Lara Jean is eventually accepted to UNC at Chapel Hill in her last week of school and decides to attend school there.

Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. 

The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who is repeatedly transported in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 with her white husband and an early 19th-century Maryland plantation just outside Easton. There, she meets some of her ancestors: a proud, free Black woman and a white planter who forces her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana stays for more extended periods in the past, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. Dana makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time.

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t always walk around with a smile plastered to his face?

Behind the cranky exterior, there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning, a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.