The Code for Love and Heartbreak by Jillian Cantor
The Code of Love and Heartbreak is a young adult modern reimagining of Emma. Emma is starting her senior year a bit sadly. Her older sister Isabelle “Izzy” Woodhouse was supposed to go to a nearby college, but changed her mind and accepted UCLA’s offer, attending alongside her boyfriend John Knightley. Ever since Emma’s mother died when she was three, it has always been Emma and Izzy in everything. Now it will be Emma alone.
Well, not exactly. It is Emma and her father who works all the time. Emma has no other friends and sees a lonely year in her future. The only bright spot in her year is a coding competition. Last year they received second place and Emma is determined more than ever to try and get first.
Emma is co-President of the coding club with George Knightley (John’s brother), and he is the closest thing she has to a “friend” but even they haven’t become more than acquaintances.
While trying to come up with a plan for an amazing project, an offhand comment from her older sister suggesting Emma “code herself a boyfriend” sprouts an idea. Then when she sees two teachers who are interested in each and appear to be good matches; that idea turns that spark into a flame and she has the idea to create a matchmaking app to match up people based on mathematics.
Emma begins questioning everyone who has ever been deep in love (such as her father and her favorite resident of the assisted living facility, Mrs. Bates); along with researching the matched up teachers online knowing if she can figure out what makes them interested in each other, she can come up with a prototype (one George laughed at the idea of).
Emma presents her idea to the coding club and it receives a lukewarm reception. George and Jane Fairfax think it is dumb and want to go with am app that tracks how much you recycle. That recycle all sounds really dumb to me, as those using it know how much they have recycled-they are the one who is doing it. Plus if it is just to show off to your friends who is the better person, everyone could just lie about the stuff they took care of. Plus even the most environmentally minded teens are not going to be logging everything they recycle.
Hannah (Harriet Smith) and Frank “Sam” Churchill are interested in the matchmaking app; while Robert Martin is unsure but leaning toward the love app.
Emma, Hannah, and Sam become good friends and start working on the app. They recruit students to try and match them up before the Homecoming dance, using the limited data they have.
But when George overhears Phillip Elton, star of the cross-country track team, make a bet with his teammates on who can get their underclassman date to put out first-Emma has second thoughts. They manage to save Hannah and the other freshman girls from their disastrous dates; but while Emma wants to end the program it is too late. They have already submitted The Love Code and must enter it in the competition.
With George and Jane now forced to be on board, the app starts to do better as they weed out the bugs and even get more people interested in being a part. Once a very lonely girl, Emma finds herself growing closer to not only Hannah and Sam, but Jane and George as well. Under the new system (which Emma never made an account for) Hannah and George match up at 96%. For some reason this upsets Emma.
Emma’s dad has always been a workaholic and never taking care of himself; the grief overcoming everything. When he has a heart attack George is her rock, being the only one she can rely on. The two grow even closer when they spend Thanksgiving together and more of their coding time.
But while many of the couples have worked out, not all of them do. Sam laughs it off saying that their job was only to match people up-whether they continue to date or not was ip to them; suggesting they add a few features to try and get more than one “match” in case the first person doesn’t work out for whatever reason.
Soon it will be time to present the app in the competition, but Emma founds herself out of sorts. With George and Hannah having such a high match, why does that make her so upset? Shouldn’t she be happy her app worked so well?
When Jane reneges on her “no boys rule” and starts dating Sam, the two who had zero matching features, why is she so unhappy to learn her app doesn’t work on everybody? Shouldn’t a part of the be a little happy?
Will Emma’s app win? Will she admit her true feelings?
One thing I didn’t really like about this interpretation is that the original Emma (Austen) was so extroverted and seemed to thrive with people, while this Emma (Cantor) is the complete opposite, wanting to be alone and an introvert.
I also thought it was odd that the high schoolers weren’t as into the dating app thing as I know my nieces were into them back in 2020 saying they couldn’t wait to get on them. Oh to be young and to have such hope.
I definitely think they would like a dating app better than a recycling app. I’m going to ask my niece who is 17 what she thinks:
dating app, i don’t recycle anything.
G, my 17 year old niece
The other things I found a bit odd is that this was published in 2020 but hardly any of the teens are on their phones texting, posting, etc. Emma mentions her phone a couple times but she doesn’t really interact nor do the other characters. It is true that Emma doesn’t have a lot of friends and spends more time on her computer, so perhaps that is why?
Also the author decided to not have Harriet Smith/Hannah Smith end up with Robert Martin but make Robert gay instead. I hate when authors change things like that with the characters when they adapt them-Harriet and Robert are supposed to be together.
I did however really enjoyed Cantor’s interpretation of Jane Fairfax. I thought the author really fleshed her out, gave her a strong personality, and I loved the friendship that started off at first reluctantly and turned into them becoming “besties”.
I also loved the scene when the coding club girls raid Isabella’s closet for the dance. Cute scene and a trope I love.
So while this is a good little story that delves well into characters and their backstories-grief, control, finding one’s place, breaking free from family to be their own person, etc; I did notice its similarity to another book I have reviewed A Match Made in Mehendi, which was published the previous year (2019)
Now I’m not suggesting that there was any plagiarizing done here; A Match Made in Mehendi is not based on Emma and the books do not have a lot in common besides the dating app and some of the themes of finding your place, your voice, being your own person, ignoring the data and going for what you want, etc. However as there are similarities, if you’ve read both, it hard not to compare them and I preferred A Match Made in Menhendi a bit more.
Both are great novels and The Code for Love and Heartbreak is a sweet young adult adaption of Emma with a neurodivergent main character. If that is why you are looking for, or if you are in search of a STEM heroine in a young adult novel; you’ll enjoy this. If you want something in a similar vein with more heart, diverse characters, and an artistic heroine; you’ll enjoy A Match Made in Mehendi more.
For more on Emma, go to Four’s Dislike of Nine is just like Emma’s Dislike of Jane Fairfax: Comparing Characters in Emma to those in The Lorien Chronicles
For more Emma variations, go to The Intrigue at Highbury (Or, Emma’s Match)
For more Jane Austen novels for Young Adults, go to Sense and Second-Degree Murder
For more “modern” retellings of Jane Austen, go to Undeceived: Pride & Prejudice in the Spy Game
For more books based on Jane Austen, go to Duty and Desire
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