REVIEW: The Duality Principle by Rebecca Grace Allen
The Duality Principle: A principle that says if a theorem is true, it remains true if each object and operation is replaced by its dual.
Dear Rebecca Grace Allen,
I like geeks so much that I married one so my interest was piqued when I saw your book was about a geeky girl completing her PhD in Mathematics at MIT in Boston. I am allergic to maths (*shudder*), so thankfully, there is little actual mathematics in the book.
Gabriella Evans is in Portland, Maine for the summer. She is staying at the house of her (now deceased) Nana – it will be her one last chance to do so, as her parents plan on selling it as soon as possible. Gabby’s parents are high achievers and her mother in particular is fixated on appearances and Gabby has never felt she measured up. She spent summers with her Nana in Maine and they are the fondest childhood memories she has. Her Nana encouraged Gabby and was one of ther few people in her life who loved her “just the way she is”. She also met Jamie, the outgoing and earthy girl next door and they become somewhat unlikely friends.
The novella begins when Gabby is on her way to a blind date, set up by her friend Jamie. Gabby has little hope that the date will be a success. She had a kinky side and whenever she’s let it out to play in the past, she has been rejected. Her most recent boyfriend was a dud in bed –
Kevin was an engineering student, a promising husband in the making who also happened to need a detailed topographic map to find her clit.
– and to add a cherry to the crappy sundae, he disapproved of her sexually adventurous side. Gabby has got to the point where she thinks she’ll just have to lock away her kinky nature, that no-one will accept all of her romantically.
Connor Starks is a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He spent a lot of his teen years in trouble with the law and having loads of sex with any girl who would put out. It wasn’t until his grandparents (who raised him from the age of 15 when he was abandoned by his mother) gave him an ultimatum: “clean up your act or when you’re 18 you’re out of here” that he was finally motivated to change. He’s good with his hands and found work in an auto shop specialising in motorbikes and he stumbled into computer coding and web design. Eventually he went to community college to get a degree and he now works as a programmer. He wants to escape from the reputation which clings to him and when he meets Gabby, he’s trying hard to be the man he thinks she will want, rather than the man he is.
Both of them then, are trying to lock down aspects of themselves and present an… aspirational personality rather than their true selves. Gabby is so unhappy with the duality of her own nature, she has decided to do her thesis on disproving the duality principle (which is maths, so naturally, I didn’t understand it).
Connor tries hard but his inner bad boy is very tempted by Gabby and Gabby’s inner kinky girl is drawn to all that Connor seeks to keep hidden. There is an element of the big misunderstanding to the set up but I was able to go with it because a) it’s a novella and the miscommunications didn’t last too long and b) they each had good reason to feel and act the way they did. Once they talk to one another honestly they are delightedly surprised to find that they both have dual natures which complement each other extremely well. The only thing left to resolve romantically is what happens when the summer ends and Gabby goes back to MIT. Is it true love or is it a fling?
The chemistry between Gabby and Connor is strong and they have a matching libidos and an affinity for semi-public sex. When the sexytimes happen, they are creative and fun.
The story was just the right length – I didn’t think the plot could sustain a full novel but at about 110 pages, it felt like a good fit. I enjoyed the humour of the story and the underlying message of acceptance. The very beginning was a little clunky and there was a “mystery” which I felt was a little heavy-handed but it was a sexy fun short which amused and entertained. I was tossing up between a C+ and a B- for the grade but I eventually settled on a B- mainly because of the charm of the main characters.
Regards,
Kaetrin
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I love geeky academic types and would love to find more books about them, but the vast majority of books where they try to use “protagonist is getting an advanced degree at a fancy school!” as a shortcut for “this person is super smart” get things SO WRONG when it comes to the actual math/science, or even just life as a grad student.
“Heroine is math grad student” sounds great to me in theory, but I’m afraid I’d start reading this book and keep getting sidetracked by “that’s not how (or when) you choose a dissertation topic” or “if you’re in a doctoral program at MIT you don’t generally just take the summer off” or “that’s not an actual math problem.”
I’d love to have more recommendations for romances with geeky and/or academic types that really nails the geeky/academic stuff.
@Lozza: Academia is one of those areas that I think is consistently misrepresented in Romancelandia, so I’m afraid I don’t have any good recommendations for you.
There is a SBTB thread on smart / nerdy heroines (not necessarily academics) with many good suggestions – http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2011/07/gs-vs-sta-nerdy-heroines/
@Lozza: +1 Besides, summer tends to be conference season, depending on your field. Every academic I know treats conferences as work, not vacation.
@Justine: I think I’m especially inclined to be harsh here because the heroine is in math, and my husband’s doctorate is in math (not from MIT but from another big math-focused research university), we were dating pretty much all throughout grad school, half our friends (or more) have doctorates in math, I have a semi-related grad degree, etc. So I can’t chalk up questionable things to differences in field, because I KNOW this field!
I also get frustrated because the nature of academia is such that you pretty much never leave it at the office. Any grad student or professor at a research institution, much less one like MIT, is going to constantly be thinking about open problems and their current research and their funding and their advisor(s) and their career path. And I know you’re not going to get into all of that in a romance novella because it’s not the point, but if it’s not clear that this kind of stuff (even if it happens largely off page) is a big part of the hero or heroine’s life, you haven’t written an accurate academic.
Also, I’m curious as to what the story’s resolution is, because if they solve the distance problem with anything besides “he moves to Boston and plans to move with her again in a couple years for her post-doc, and then follow her to yet another city when she takes her first tenure-track job” I’m calling BS on that too. (I feel like these stories usually end up with the city mouse discovering that s/he loves the small town where the story is set, and so decides to uproot and move there. Which is not something you do if you are getting your doctorate at MIT)
@Lozza: This book is probably not for you then! LOL As a maths and academia ignoramus, it was easy for me to overlook those things. I don’t really take maths stuff in anyway – it’s all gobbledygook to me. As soon as someone starts talking about calculus or equations my brain starts to leak out of my ears.
The US system of education is also mostly a blank slate for me so as long as it sounds *plausible* I’ll give it a pass.
In the heroine’s defence, she has always loved Portland, Maine. :D
I know what you mean about it being your field. I’m like that with legal issues. I work in an allied field and I worked with lawers for a long time before that and my brother is a lawyer. When I see things in a book that just can’t be true (Summer Days by Susan Mallery comes to mind https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/332017098?book_show_action=false) I get so thrown out of the story that I just can’t even.
@Justine: No conferences here – just relaxing and doing some work on her dissertation (which, even to me, seemed a bit far-fetched but: maths).
I’m reading the sample and the hero went to my high school. Trippy!
Just read the first few pages on Amazon- I’m pretty skeptical on the academic bits, but the hero went to the same high school I did. I think there’s a rule that now I have to read it.
@Faye: I’m pretty sure it is a rule :D
@Kaetrin: So I got it and read it this evening, because of the rule, and can confirm that the academic bits are completely silly. The my-hometown-bits are crazy to read, because it is not just my hometown but the small neighborhood I grew up in, and scenes happen in my backyard, in landmarks that I can recognize, but with strange twists.
All the landmarks described are within a mile of where I grew up, and are mentioned by name or described to the extent that I know exactly which ice cream shop is being referenced, but then in Duality-Principle-Universe we have a sheriff instead of a police chief, the football players date the cheerleaders, people have parties with bonfires and kegs on the beach that closes at 9pm (and is home to people who will call the cops if they see you taking a quiet stroll after dark). Little things, but coupled with the exact use of real places, it creates this cognitive dissonance.
@Faye: too funny! I didn’t know you could close a beach at 9pm (or anytime apart from for natural disasters or swimming warnings for jellyfish, big waves or sharks). I get what you mean about cognitive dissonance – I’m not sure I could read a romance set where I grew up – I did see a serial killer movie set where I grew up – that might tell you something.