36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You by Vicki Grant - Reshelved Books

Hello everyone! 

So, let's talk about love.  Specifically, do you think that love can be formed through a survey of 36 questions answered together by two complete strangers? Well, Vicki Grant and her novel 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You thinks it just might be possible.  

This kind of kills the mystical and spiritual idea of love, no?  Well according to Grant, there was a study by Dr. Arthur Aron that suggests the love can be engineered through such a survey.  I took Psych 101 in college, not that I remember much of it other than that I had to color - yes, color - a picture of the brain, so I can't really say that I am familiar with the study  Actually, I could be a good reference librarian and research the study, but I'm doing laundry and painting cats right now...and don't really feel like it, so we'll just go with what the novel proposes.

The premise of this novel is a study with the hopes of proving or disproving Dr. Arthur Aron's hypothesis.  Can love be engineered between two strangers through 36 questions.  The two strangers that we meet are Hildy and Paul.  Both from two very different economic and familial backgrounds.  We have Hildy, the child a stereotypical nuclear family and who's mother is a doctor, and we have Paul, the child of a single mother who is poor and lives on his own.  Hildy signs up for the study because she feels honor bound by science, and Paul signs up because he wants the $40 it pays. 

What I liked about this novel is that it is written as an epistolary, where we have the question and answer/dialogue form.  This makes the novel read rather quickly.  What I didn't like about the novel is that Hildy and Paul do not answer the questions within the domains of the study room.  They leave the room!  They answer them through online messaging! In coffee shops! And God knows where else!  They have days to answer these questions! AND they have days to talk about other things that stem off of the questions, so of course love is possible.  Their potential love is not just based off the survey alone.  It's a learning process, just like any other relationship would be.  

So dear readers, I give you a rating of 3 out of 5 Coffee Beans.  I read this book within a day and I DID enjoy it, but besides the study not really being a study, Hildy annoyed me.  

Until the next read!
~Jessica