True Love and Other Impossible Odds

Helen Hoang meets Nina LaCour in this queer YA book–written by APALA Award-winning author Christina Li–about a girl who develops an algorithm to predict people’s perfect matches during her first year of college, while questioning her own sexuality. 

After Grace Tang lost her mother and wrecked the only friendship she cared about during her senior year of high school, she lives her first year of college like a predictable formula: attend class, study, go home and visit her dad every weekend. Repeat. There’s no room in her life for outliers or anomalies.

As a project for her statistics class, Grace comes up with the idea to use an algorithm to pair students with their perfect romantic partner. Though some people are skeptical, like Julia, Grace’s coworker at the campus library, Grace is confident that her algorithm is accurate. That’s why she keeps trying to make things work with her “perfect” match, a guy named Jamie. But as the semester goes on and she grows closer to Julia, Grace starts to question who she’s really attracted to.

In acclaimed author Christina Li’s YA debut, Grace will have to make a choice between the tidy equations she knows will protect her heart from grief, or the possibility that true love doesn’t follow a formula.

Christina Li is the author of the middle grade novels Clues to the Universe and Ruby Lost and Found, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature, as well as the forthcoming teen novel True Love and Other Impossible Odds. At any given time she is probably daydreaming about characters and drinking too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home.

"Heartbreaking and deeply honest, True Love and Other Impossible Odds is a beautiful story about loss, second chances, and figuring out who we are." -Dustin Thao, New York Times Bestselling author of You've Reached Sam

“A reminder that love and joy can be found in the most unexpected places, and that there is no pain or tragedy that precludes us from finding our way to the happy ending.” -Sonora Reyes, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School

"Every now and then you read a book that you know will stay with you for a long time. True Love and Other Impossible Odds is one of those books. Honest, raw, and breathtakingly real." -Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick, New York Times bestselling authors of She Gets the Girl 

"The blueprint for contemporary coming-of-age. True Love and Other Impossible Odds navigates the complex, beautiful time of burgeoning adulthood, where imperfect understandings of love inspire the greatest plunge toward growth."  -Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

"The perfect story about the miraculous improbability of love in all its forms. At turns romantic, lyrical, hilarious, and moving, this book is as comforting as a hot drink after a day spent out in the snow with the people you love."  -Jake Maia Arlow, bestselling and Stonewall Award-winning author of How to Excavate a Heart