Emma is lost when her sister Izzy moves to college and now she has to figure out how to be social on her own accord. Everything is going according to plan for senior year when she's working well with George, co-captain of the coding club, and has designed the perfect matching app. What could be better than setting up fellow classmates with their perfect match? Except do humans fit perfectly in algorithms?

This story is an adorable coming of age story and seeing a high school senior begin to find her own way and voice through life. Emma knows she's not a people person, and definitely not a popular kid in school, and is nervous when her very social sister leaves. However it is really great seeing her blossom out of her sister's shadow and become her own person. I appreciated seeing her fight for what she wants in her present and future, and become very accepting of herself. I also loved the insight of the fear of the future and starting new and leaving the old behind.

I have not read Jane Austen's "Emma" so I cannot speak on the retelling piece of it. However, this is an adorable YA romance read. I'm also always a big fan of a fresh feminist voice creating women in STEM fields and normalizing it.

Thank you InkYard Press and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

If you are looking for a sweet, fun book inspired as a retelling of Emma, then this is it. It is perfectly reset into modern day, with the ideas of coding and apps for dating. I think the ideas and plot works well. My one negative is the pace was a bit slow for my taste but I am not the intended audience.
Overall, I would recommend this to Jane Austen lovers who enjoy a modern day retelling.
#TheCodeforLoveandHeartbreak #NetGalley #InkYardPress

This will be a book that I may get for my classroom. I think that this could be a good book for young Jane Austen fans. I cannot get into the book at this time so I will be putting it on hold for now and not review it.

As a lover of all things Jane Austen, I was really eager to read The Code for Love and Heartbreak; an Emma re-telling.

However, I found it a little lackluster. Not close enough to the spirit of it’s muse, really. The characters and story were great–I think my issue was that this book just read like a YA novel. Not the witty tale of a girl in need of a wake-up that Emma is.

Definitely one, in my opinion, for a younger crowd.

My review will be available at the link given, on March 23, 2021.

Thanks NetGalley for the preview!

This book sort of fell short for me. The language seemed a little immature for high school seniors, especially ones who are the smartest kids in the school. The way the teens treated each other seemed inauthentic as well, their language and interactions never matched up. Emma ended up being a lot meaner and ruthless than I expected. It wasn't a bad story just really not for me.

A really good book though it was slow paced in my opinion. Still very interesting and well executed though!! Overall, solid 3 star read. Though I did get bored during reading it during some points.

This novel was such a treat to read! The characters were well developed and thought out. I love when I read a novel where the characters grow through events and circumstances, Cantor's novel delivered. This was a heartwarming and endearing story. The romantic relationships were predictable, but I didn't even care because the novel was so well thought out. I would highly recommend this book to any of my students!

The social awkwardness of the main character helps in two regards. The first, it can give insight into our own awkwardness (and makes us feel so seen!) The second, it can help us understand someone in our own lives that might be socially awkward in similar ways. I found myself cringing at times, as I recognised some of the mistakes that I myself have made; at other times, I found myself understand some of the things that friends of mine have said and done. Other than that, this book is a cute love story, romantic and other, that underlines the importance of real teamwork and what winning truly means.

This was so cute. It takes a minute to get going but once your in, the pace is good.

Emma has issues socially connecting. Numbers keep is clean and simple. Now with her sister gone, she doesn't have her around to help her socially. So what better use for her senior project than to kill two birds with one stone. Learn how people connect mathmatically.

She quickly learns though, humans are anything but simple and that though her math works, it cant account for the unaccountable element, human emotions.

It was overall a very cute retelling of Emma.

Set in the modern world, against the backdrop of coding and tech in high school, Emma struggles to fit in anywhere that isn't Coding Club. The character development was fantastic and the story was adorable.

Overall, I liked it.

Love this modern-day interpretation of Emma. Austen's work is alive and well in the world of high school and coding. It was an interesting and innovative way to bring a classic to the masses.

It wasn't for me. I tried to love it because I love a Emma retelling but it was trying too hard to match it and didn't show enough creativity for me.

My feelings for this book were a bit all over the place, but I really enjoyed the story.

I wasn't a fan of the dating app because I don't feel like Emma would have ever decided to base her project for a state competition, and by extension her application to Stanford, at risk by simply creating a dating app. Being a type A student. myself, we would have pushed hard a more meaningful and useful tool that judges would have had to admire. The recycling idea was way better

However,

Once you understand that this is a retelling of Emma, the Jan Austen classic, it's easy to forgive that particular plot device. It's a modern twist on this classic tale. Emma was not my favorite character, but she wasn't my favorite character in the original version either. I often times found myself wondering if Emma could be on the spectrum, because of the extreme difficulties she has in relationships with other people and social clues. Though this is never said by the author, it seemed hinted at. Otherwise, she is simply the most naive high school senior on the planet. If Emma doesn't have a medical reason for her awkwardness, then Jillian Cantor simply took this aspect of the character too far.

I know that she's supposed to be oblivious, but, seriously, it's a lot.

The characters don't go into a ton of depth and the sexism is awfully blatant. I just wanted more nuance to the story, especially since it's based on a book by my favorite author.

The writing style itself was was to read and flowed well.

ACFLAH is a genuinely cute idea that just fell flat in the execution.

I thought this was a very cute retelling of Emma by Jane Austen. The author did a wonderful job of making the romance in the story believable and genuine. I really liked that most of the relationships that came together were more about being compatible and not just looking for a physical "hookup". The story made me laugh out loud many time throughout and I found myself feeling it was very relatable. This book definitely took me through a wide range of emotions and I enjoyed it completely.

Thank you to the publisher and to netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own!

I will have to admit my first book of 2021 was a disappointment. The Code for Love and Heartbreak is about Emma, a senior in highschool, coding along with the coding club she is co-president of, a dating app for their schools to present at a coding competition.

Now get this: Emma doesn't understand people, she only understands numbers (something repeated one too many times in the book. we get it). She does not want to date (she's too busy! love sucks!), repeats this fact to every one who is willing to hear, and yet has the audacity to feel angry/betrayed/surprised when her "crush" starts dating someone else. "crush" in quotation marks because oh god the relationships in this book were a mess.

I think the two main things that turned me off in this book were...

1. Emma. You'd think you'd try to make the main character of the book at least somewhat likeable right? I need to be rooting for her at least a LITTLE. But from the very first page of the book, Emma got on my nerves big time. I couldn't put my finger exactly on what made her so annoying right at this moment but the amount of times I just had to roll my eyes while reading is astronomical.

Multiple times in the book (in fact, every time the environment is mentioned) Emma just can't help but think it's stupid and that no one cares. What's up with that? It was done maybe a few too many times for me to just ignore it – is this the author coming out, or just the character having a random vendetta against saving the planet?

Not to mention!!! At the beginning of the book, coding club gets two ideas for the competition. Her dating app, and an app to get people to recycle more. Of course the latter idea is shut down as stupid and unoriginal... compared to a dating app? Give me a break. I thought from the beginning that the recycling app was such a good idea and could be fun with a little bit of tweaking (adding a few features, etc) but hey since it's recycling it's dumb right?? right???

So Emma is (1) not a supporting friend (2) not very nice (3) actually pretty annoying. lovely.

2. this is a romance, right. Let's keep that in mind, because I almost forgot reading the book. None of the couples, absolutely none, had any chemistry at all. There is George and Sam, and Emma who clearly has a crush on at least one of the two. The other starts dating, but apparently likes Emma. Then there's Jane, who has more chemistry with Emma than any other character in the book, lowkey flirts with her, opens up to her, understands her like no other character in the book, but they're "just friends." Bro. I don't think I have to say this but don't be that author who tries to force a hetero relationship when there's a perfectly good (better) one right there...

So, no chemistry. Not only boring, but when relationships come out of nowhere, it's very frustrating. That whole "oh wait they've liked each other the whole time" except there's no evidence in the book and I don't ship the two characters at all. It even felt like there was somewhat of a love triangle (or even a love mess between all the people in coding club) but it was just... not good. I knew how it was going to end (read the blurb and you know who she'll end up with. If you were going to make me think Emma likes someone else for 70% of the book then what's the point???).

Anyway. I'm going to stop here because this is becoming too much of a rant. Do I recommend this book? Not really, but if you're looking for a short read with some coding fun in it, why not. This book just really, really wasn't for me.

I don't think the story/plot/idea was that bad, which is what frustrates me the most. I just think some particular aspects were done quite poorly (think: how the characters were written, the writing style, no diversity, unlikeable characters, not enough diversity, a predictable plot).

This book is a great teenage adaptation of EMMA. Very cute, very intelligent, and still managing to keep my attention.

This was a quick and easy read. Overall I think I read it in two or three reading breaks. That’s something I really enjoy about reading contemporary books; I can usually get through them much faster than with a standard fantasy…but that’s also because I love fantasy and want to take my time understanding the worldbuilding and whatever magic applies and all of that.

I thought that this was a pretty good adaptation of the main storyline from the original novel, and I sincerely have to say that I really enjoyed that this book really did focus on coding. I don’t know how many books I’ve read where the characters are into coding and go to a camp or an internship or something, and then the story glosses over the technical stuff to focus on relationship growth and drama. Don’t get me wrong; there’s plenty of drama and such in this story, but there is also a lot of time spent developing the app and the code for the app and all that.

Emma and George and all the rest of the characters were all done rather well, and felt so relatable. I mean, I know that I graduated from high school back in 2006, but I still remember those feelings of a looming upcoming transition, and being uncertain of friendships and relationships, and wondering about the future, and panicking about college and GPAs and just all of it. That’s one of the things that I can still say, even as an adult reading YA; I haven’t forgotten those experiences or feelings. And I don’t have issues thinking that characters aren’t acting their age or whatever…except for a few random stories I’ve read where the characters were 16-17 but were seriously acting as if they were 12-13.

Anyway, I was invested in this story, and seeing how the app Emma made worked and didn’t work for her schoolmates. It was rather intriguing overall, and I’m so glad that I read this book. I can definitely recommend it for anyone who has liked any other version of Emma, or for people with an interest in technology, especially coding and app design.

This story is a Jane Austen retelling. Emma specifically, but in this case, we have an Emma who is more geared towards numbers rather than people and a George who is part of her coding club. Emma is a senior in high school her sister Izzy has just gone off to college clear across the country. Emma is starting to feel the loss of that constant companionship when Izzy left, though Izzy left her with an off-handed comment of possibly building herself a boyfriend. This year Emma wants to win the national coding competition so she can put it on her resume and get into the school she wants. so she's hyper-focused on that and she decides that she's going to build an app that pairs people up mathematically for the perfect love matches.

Already we are deviating from the original Emma story but I do like how we are making Emma more of this analytical character, more of this character who's struggling to understand emotions. In the original Emma story, Emma has a social way about her but she doesn't always understand people's emotions, so here we've taken out that social aspect and added that cluelessness. at the same time, we still have Emma trying to match people up but for more for her own benefit than for the benefit of the people involved.

I like the inclusion of jane in the story. we didn't necessarily see a whole lot of her in the original Emma, but here she is added into the coding club. And I like how the story was modernized. there were points in here though, because of how disconnected Emma was with her own emotions, the build-up between Emma and George felt a little weird. I almost started to ship jane and Emma a little bit more than anybody else. which was a very interesting place for me to be. They just seem to have more of this connection in the coding club than anybody else.

I really loved the development aspect of this story of watching this team build this app and part of that might have been because I a part of that world. that is what I do. I connected with a lot of those pieces of building the algorithm and doing the interface and trying to get people to adopt this technology. I've been part of these coding competitions before so I knew how they looked and feel, so I really like this retelling.

it's definitely not a retelling for everybody because Emma is very disconnected from social interactions and basic human emotions. she's just not built that way and that's why I connected to her. but not everybody is going to feel that way. but if you do like retellings and you do like jane Austen and you do like the story of Emma you will probably really enjoy this story.

so do I recommend it? yes, I thought it was fun and cute.

The Code for Love and Heartbreak
by Jillian Cantor
Inkyard Press
Teens & YA
Pub Date 06 Oct 2020



I am reviewing a copy of The Code for Love and Heartbreak through Inkyard Press:


The Code for Love is born, when math genius Emma and her coding club co-president, George, are tasked with brainstorming a new project.



George does not agree with Emma’s idea of creating a matchmaking app, accusing her of meddling in people’s lives. But all the happy new couples at school are proof that the app works or so it appears at first.


Emma’s code is flawless, so why are these perfectly matched couples breaking up? Why are the wrong people falling for each other? Why are Emma’s own feeling defying any algorithm.



I give The Code For Love and Heartbreak four out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

Overall, averagely entertaining. I found it predictable and was frustrated on the main character's dependence on her far-off sister.