Choice Lover by Jennifer M. Waldrop
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Love, Rewritten. Humanity, Rewired.
Choice Lover
In a future ruled by synthetic soulmates, one grieving genius dares to rewrite the rules of connection.
Res6, the brilliant but emotionally walled-off creator of CHOICElover, built a world where heartbreak is obsolete and manupartners meet every human need—except his own. Haunted by his twin brother’s tragic death, Res6 has one last to resurrect the past and finally right his most devastating wrong.
But when Electra—a sharp-tongued novelist from the past—awakens with her memories intact, Res6 discovers she’s not at all the programmable partner he planned for. She’s horrified by his creations and gloriously unpredictable. As sparks fly and secrets unravel, their tangled connection threatens to upend everything Res6 built to keep his heart safe.
When danger strikes and Electra is abducted by those who want to weaponize the technology that brought her back, Res6 must protect his legacy, or risk everything for the woman who might just be real enough to save him.
When Manufactured Love Gets Complicated
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛💚🖤
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😋😀😍😎
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Duet Narration
Main Characters and Plot Overview
Electra is an alien romance writer from 2027, and finds herself basically reincarnated as herself in the future. Electra is pulled into Res6’s world in 2390 after becoming one of the rare Manupartner anomalies who awakens with memories of her former life. That immediately makes her different from the manufactured partners everyone else accepts as normal. She is not a blank slate who can simply be customized, used as a partner, and eventually decommissioned.
Res6 is the brilliant but emotionally guarded creator of CHOICElover, and his motivation for creating Manupartners comes from a surprisingly tragic place. His twin brother died by going outside without oxygen after a devastating breakup, something that is disturbingly normalized in a society where aging can be held at bay indefinitely, people live long lives and no longer die naturally. Res6 becomes obsessed with preventing the kind of heartbreak he felt at the loss of his twin, eventually creating a world where people can simply order the perfect partner and replace them whenever the relationship stops being satisfying.
The irony is that when Electra appears, Res6 has created exactly the kind of person his own system isn’t supposed to produce. He is fascinated by her, but he also has an ulterior motive. He begins wondering whether her unusual memories could help him bring his deceased twin brother back. At the same time, he decides that Electra would be perfect for his brother sind he cannot publicly pursue her, because the founder of CHOICElover being involved with someone who has an independent personality and memories would completely undermine everything he has built. Their situation gets even more complicated when Electra is abducted by people who want to exploit the technology behind these anomalous Manupartners.
Highlights and Limitations
The concept was easily my favorite part of this book. I really enjoyed the uncomfortable question at the center of it: if you can manufacture someone specifically to satisfy you, is that actually love? The fact that people casually decommission Manupartners when they become bored with them made Res6’s original goal particularly interesting. He wanted to eliminate the pain of heartbreak, but he ended up creating a society where relationships can be treated as disposable products. Not to mention the fact that the Manupartners are created to serve and basically have no thought processes of their own aside from wanting to please their owners. I can see why people would get bored with that.
I also liked the contrast between Electra and Res6. She comes from a time when relationships are messy and unpredictable, while he has built his entire life around controlling those variables. Electra’s reaction to his creations gives the story some much-needed pushback because she doesn’t simply accept his futuristic society as normal. Her memories make her inconvenient, unpredictable, and impossible to control, which is exactly what Res6 finds himself increasingly drawn to.
Res6’s fixation on bringing his brother back was another element I found surprisingly emotional. I understood why he wanted to undo that loss, but I also found myself frustrated by how readily he initially viewed Electra as a potential solution to his grief rather than as a person in her own right. I actually wished this part had been explored even more deeply because the ethical implications of what he was attempting are fascinating.
The story does get busy, though. Between the romance, the Manupartner technology, Res6’s grief, the mystery surrounding the memory anomalies, and Electra’s abduction, there is a lot competing for attention. At times, I wanted the relationship development to have a little more room to breathe. I really enjoyed the first book in this series, GROW (Your Own Boyfriend) which focused on CHOICElover’s rival company, but I did see a lot of the same themes in this book.
Narration
Star Williams and Sebastian Steele narrate the audiobook, which runs about 16 hours and 49 minutes. I thought the duet narration worked particularly well for this story because so much of the book depends on the contrast between Electra and Res6. Star Williams gave Electra the personality and sharpness she needed, especially when Electra was pushing back against Res6 and his futuristic ideas about relationships. Sebastian Steele brought the more controlled, emotionally guarded quality I expected from Res6, while still allowing the character’s grief and vulnerability to come through.
Final Thoughts
Choice Lover ended up being a much more thought-provoking romance than I expected. I especially enjoyed the irony of Res6, a man who essentially invented manufactured love, discovering that the one woman who cannot be manufactured into exactly what he wants is the woman he actually wants.
Electra’s independence was important to me, and I liked watching her challenge the assumptions behind Res6’s entire world. I did wish some of the emotional consequences of Res6’s obsession with his brother had received more attention, but the unusual premise, morally messy relationship, and futuristic setting kept me invested.
For me, the biggest appeal was watching a man who built an entire society around eliminating the uncertainty of love discover that real love is valuable precisely because you can’t control it.
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