I loved Jennifer's last book and this one was great too! She really taps into that YA mind frame and writes stories you can really connect with.

Thank you to Penguin Teen for providing me with an e-ARC of Love, Decoded in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 rounded up!

I didn't realize until the very end of Love, Decoded that this takes place in the A Taste for Love universe. & apparently it's an Emma retelling, which is something else I didn't realize until the end.

Love, Decoded is cute! I absolutely adored all of the characters, especially sweet Etta! It doesn't focus too much on the romance (although it subtly pops up throughout the book) & more so on Gigi & her growing up + creating her app + taking Etta under her wing.

When I first saw Love, Decoded - based on cover, title, and some of the description I was expecting a cute rom-com, but I was met with a coming of age story instead. There was a lot going on at all times throughout the book, but this contributed to me feeling very overwhelmed, and eventually bored. It was either hard to keep track of everything or entirely impossible. I wanted more romance in this romance novel.

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I found the plot conflict to be messy and unclear — was it that Gigi wanted to be a matchmaker or did she feel like her family was pressuring her to be one? The heartfelt scene with her parents near the conclusion makes it clear that they don’t have any expectations of her, so then where did Gigi’s projections come from? It all made for a very confusing premise and there was little clarity at the end. I wished that Yen did more to tackle anti-Asian sentiments and talk about race in this book, aside from the quick dialogue about White-passing. What irked me the most about the book was how much Gigi reeked of privilege but fails to see it throughout the book — the callouts to brands in her OOTDs don’t help. Lots of potential for this YA book but I felt it fell short in many ways.

From the first paragraph, I knew this book would be a good one. I immersed myself into the book from the first chapter and I cannot say enough good things about this book! Honestly amazing! The writing is incredible and the plot is just one to die for. I am absolutely obsessed with this book. My favorite part would have to be the character development throughout the book. Character development is something I look forward to and this book did not disappoint.

This was my first book by this author and I had a fun time!

This story starts off with Gigi Wong wrapping up her final year of high school. Gigi has always wanted to be the best at everything but this last year of school is really shining some light on some unclear areas in her life and some dark spots on her character. When a school project goes south and her budding relationship with the new girl in school turns upside down, Gigi has to make some serious decisions that will affect her life forever.

I felt a range of emotions when I was reading this book. From loving Gigi's relationship with her family and how much pride she took in the family business to laughing at how easy going and free her relationship with her bestfriend Kyle is, even though it's so obvious that he has feelings for her but Gigi is too blind to see it. But I also loved how the author wasn't afraid to show the dark areas of Gigi's character. Yes, Gigi is the prefect student and she does things out of the kindness of her heart, but she also has a lot to lean when it comes to having multiple groups of friends and treating them all the same no matter what their situation is.

I am loving Jennifer Yen's retellings. They always feel like they add something a bit extra to the experience in this story's case, a bit of STEM magic.

This was an overall meh story. The characters, romance and plot are alright, it’s not bad but I felt like it needed more layers, complexity and build up.
I appreciated the MC’s growth but I felt like it also needed a bit more depth.

I loved this Emma retelling! Thrilled to see glimpses of characters from A Tale for Love. This is a great book to use to compare to Jane Austen’s original text and see how new setting and cultural differences impact the story!

I enjoyed a lot of aspects of this book, even though I wasn’t the target audience, but there were parts that didn’t feel fully fleshed out to me. Maybe if I had read Emma it would’ve felt better, but I haven’t and I also don’t feel like that should be a requirement to understand a retelling. I mean, I know the story of Clueless, but this didn’t even remind me of that.

Gigi is a high school junior who shadows her Great Aunt as a matchmaker. She decides to turn her aunt’s matchmaking questions into an app to help to make her life easier and realizes that she loves coding. When her school has a contest to create an app that can get them into a bigger contest for an internship, she creates an app that uses her matchmaking knowledge to create friendships. However, it ends up biting her in the butt later on.

Gigi is super rich. Like, really really rich. This confused me at first because I don’t think it was laid out very well. It wasn’t until I was well into the book where they describer her house as having 6 floors and an elevator (in New York City! Does this even exist???) where I realized how rich she was. There was a mention at the beginning of the story about her having a driver pick her up from school but it’s mostly phrased like “Fernando can pick you up from school” and I don’t think I thought much past it. Since this is essential to the story, I would’ve appreciated if it had been made a bit more clear.

I enjoyed all of the characters in this story. In fact, Gigi might’ve been my least favorite. Her best friend Kyle also could’ve been fleshed out a little bit more, but I loved how he called Gigi out on her bull and also was funny. Etta was maybe my favorite of the friend characters. She’s a bit rough around the edges at first, of course, but her personality is true gold. I love that Gigi decides to make the matchmaking app specifically for her because she’s having a hard time making friends as the new kid in school.

The side of the story that was fleshed out was the STEM side. Gigi’s love of coding and matchmaking and the combination of the two was so fun. I loved seeing a strong and smart female character in high school. She knew what she wanted and worked hard to get it, even if she did go a bit over the top.

This book is very fun and inspiring, but had a few misses for me. I don’t feel like she had quite the heart of gold that Cher in Clueless did, so some of her observations and comments came off a bit rough. I liked seeing how everything was going to play out and enjoyed Gigi’s growth throughout the story. I flew this one an thought it was cute, but it wasn’t one that I loved. I think I’ll forget about it as the year goes on.

I liked the STEM theme and the details of the app building, but unfortunately I had a difficult time with this book for multiple reasons. I enjoyed A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen, but this one isn’t a book I could recommend.
Thank you to @penguinteen and @netgalley for the complimentary digital ARC and to @PRHAudio for the free ALC.

Was it a little cheesy? Yes. Did I still have a great time reading it? Absolutely.

First, the highlights: I was entertained throughout the story, from the matchmaking to the coding to the main conflict. As a ~woman in STEM~ myself, I especially enjoyed reading about the process of Gigi programming her app, which was described in more depth than I expected (revealing her passion for CS from the very beginning).

The problems I had were small, mostly dealing with the obliviousness of the main character about her behavior toward her new friend. While the friendship conflict was not completely unrealistic, I struggled reading through her privileged point of view in some scenes.

Also, I would note that although some reviewers are calling it a rom-com, I would disagree. While there is a romantic subplot, it is a small element of the story. Instead, I would argue that Love, Decoded centers friendship and personal growth, which I found refreshing.

I figured out this was an Emma retelling only because it reminded me of the plot of Clueless!
Love Decoded did have a lot to like but somehow I struggled to connect with this book. It could be just because I'm drifting away from YA as my kids age out of it. I loved the idea of a family matchmaking business SO much but something about this one just didn't grab me. I also feel like I've read several YA books with a plot about an app contest or some kind of matchmaking app. I wish I'd loved this more but I think it needed more oomph.

4.5 ⭐️

I really loved this one!!

Recently talked about this book in our NetGalley vlog and absolutely LOVED IT 🥰 I thought the premise was really original and loved the characters and setting here! Including the matchmaking element was also such a fun bonus!! I loved learning about that, as well as seeing Gigi's world from an upper-class NYC point of view.

I thought Gigi's character arc throughout the book was perfect!! She made mistakes, and learned from them, and I really loved being on that journey with her.

Overall, highly recommend for YA rom com lovers who like women in tech and a sprinkle of romance! There’s also a fun prep school element and big themes of learning and friendship!! It was so cute and soooo good.

xx
-Christine

I love a good Jane Austen retelling. I would definitely recommend this to my students, especially when exploring works that are similar to the original. I know a lot of adults still enjoy YA, but I would recommend this for the teen audience it is geared for.

I really enjoyed Jennifer Yen’s other book A Taste for Love and I was so excited to see that this book is another low-key retelling! This time, for Emma which is one of my favorite classics!

What I love most about Jennifer Yen’s retellings is that it’s not completely obvious that it’s a retelling but it’s fun to find the parallels.

First, I want to say that I love the little tie in to A Taste for Love! I won’t say much because I don’t want to venture into spoilers, but it made my heart really happy!

It was really cool to see a best friends to lovers story with these two lovable characters! Gigi was confident and wonderful and I think the family dynamics were really interesting to parallel the original story without being extremely obvious. It also brought a fresh perspective in terms of culture!

I really liked the relationship between Etta and Gigi as well. It was so interesting to see that Etta was more of a combination of Mrs. Bates and Harriet!

My favorite thing about the book was that it had a combination of matchmaking elements while also adding a cool STEM element with Gigi’s love for coding.

If you enjoy light and fun retellings with best friends to lovers, girls in STEM (with a side of matchmaking), and a little bit of drama, you’ll enjoy this one!

Love Decoded is a rom-com that should appeal to fans of Jenny Han and Sandhya Menon. It’s heartfelt and sweet without being overly saccharine. Author Jennifer Yen knows her audience and plays well to YA sensibilities.

However, if you’re looking for a book that’s heavy on the romance elements, then Love Decoded may disappoint you. Yen, instead focuses on Gigi’s personal growth and her relationships with a number of friends and her family. The “romance” part is more of a sub-plot, slow-burn type thing that works really well in this setting.

Love Decoded is lighthearted and entertaining. The book was inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma, and if you’re familiar with it, then you’ll recognize parallels, including the slow-to-romance theme, throughout.

A bright, uptown private school girl takes an ultra-modern approach to her Asian auntie’s old-school matchmaking career to win an exclusive tech internship contest. But, she must learn if the wayward ways of the heart can truly be decoded into an app.

In this follow up standalone story to A Taste for Love, the hero’s younger sister has her own coming of age challenge in which her friends to lovers romance takes on the flavor of Jane Austen’s Emma. Gigi may be popular, privileged, and sees herself skilled with setting others to rights. But, like the classic matchmaker, seems to have a blindspot to the error codes she is making along the way.

Love, Decoded is a light and adorable coming of age story that was a qualified good read. It was loaded with an engaging Asian backdrop and cast of characters living in NYC and had a crisp modern feel with the private school students learning to be tech savvy and a strong base in maths and sciences. I loved seeing all this and enjoyed the modern world feel. There were nuances of family expectation, race, social strata, future plans, and more to add depth though without much drama attached to these social elements.

The book seemed to glide along on the surface and didn’t dig deeply into the social issues, relationships or characters’ development. I think it was partly the writing style, but mostly story content that caused this. I can’t honestly say I got more than moderately engaged with the story or vested in the main characters as a result. In fact, I was bored some of the time and the ending was a mixed bag. Fortunately, there is humor throughout that I appreciated especially when some of Gigi’s mistakes, that many of us would have made when we were younger, had me cringing knowing what would be the result.

The romance is a side line to Gigi’s own story as she must ride high, fall to the bottom, and learn from it all. Gigi has a high opinion of herself that other people helped cultivate and it leads her into thinking she’s all that and a bag of chips. There were a lot of fun comparisons to Jane Austen’s Emma especially the fallible main character Gigi, but ultimately, this is its own story and characters. I could cheer for Gigi to get a clue and fix all she broke including the very good thing she has with Kyle. I could have wished that Kyle played a larger role in the story, but, then again, Gigi wasn’t ready to change and that kept him at a distance. It was sweet, but also had its funny moments.

So, there were aspects that left me indifferent, but I could appreciate the easy, low-angst story of a girl figuring out love and life, sometimes painfully, set against her Asian neighborhood, friends, family and school. I will recommend it to those who want something light and easy, humorous and tender.

Thank you Penguin Teen for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Love, Decoded is a cute contemporary Emma retelling mixed with cool coding and a friends-to-lovers relationship.

Gigi is a high school junior who is near the top of her class. She’s got the grades, the volunteer hours, her best friend Kyle, and a promising career in matchmaking that her grandmother wants to pass onto her. So when the idea hits Gigi to code a matchmaking app using her grandmother’s data she is enraptured in the idea…even more than the matchmaking itself.

When Gigi’s Computer Science class gets word of a coding competition Gigi knows she wants to win and she’s got just the app for the job.

This book was giving me Jenny Han and Blair Waldorf vibes, both of which I’m a fan. The coding element of this book had to be one of my favorite parts, the fact that Gigi cared so much for it gave me a better appreciation for a world I know so little about.

I never thought I would say this but I was expecting the friends-to-lovers relationship to be the big focus in the story and it wasn’t. I can’t tell if I’m slightly disappointed or oddly refreshed. The focus is on Gigi in this mentor/mentee relationship for the majority and with it being an Emma retelling it makes sense, just not what I’m used to in a contemporary.

The pacing of the book did throw me off at times. I read the first third fairly quickly but I was looking for a big plot twist or wrench in the gears but that really didn’t come until the last third. While I would have loved more conflict earlier on, maybe it wouldn’t have been the same story. As it was you get this really easy-going time getting to know Gigi and her mentee over many a meal and shopping date.

I did enjoy Gigi and the side characters in this story and for fans of an easygoing contemporary that isn’t relationship-focused, I’d tell them to try out Love, Decoded.

3.5 stars

A coming of age story focused on the main character and not the romance, I loved it. I had just finished watching an episode of ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ in which Midge’s mom (Rose Weissman) makes it her business to be a matchmaker, and an amazing one at that!
Diving into this book, and reading Gigi’s story was so heartwarming, in a #girlboss way.
And yes, there were some hiccups, and drama, and frustrations, but all of those things are inevitable when you’re a teen.
It was her story, her preserverence, and her attitude towards it all that made me smile throughout.

I haven’t read A Taste for Love, but you’re right in thinking I’m about to order it after I finish this review!

If you love reading about young women making a difference, welp.. all I can say is, this one’s for you!