This timely, funny, chronically online novel delves deep into questions about connection in the age of AI assistance for everything—even love.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Love Is an Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson, which releases on March 31st 2026.
Eve wants to make music that’s fueled by love, passion, and rage (feelings!). She trusts her gut and her friends and in no way wants to rely on technology, let alone AI, to tell her how she feels. Danny is anxious—about his dad, his dating life, his coffee order (why is it twelve dollars?), and about the dating app he helped create, which seems determined to serve him terrible matches.
When Eve and Danny start dating, it feels like the solution to all of Danny’s worries—except when it doesn’t. Is she happy? Should he be doing more? Or less? This becomes the catalyst for a revolutionary new version of Danny’s app that promises to quantify relationship health and potential, helping users understand what’s really going on. Problem solved!
As Pattern and Bug, the ever-so-friendly AI assistant, catch fire, users everywhere begin outsourcing major life decisions to Danny’s algorithms. But as Danny reckons with his newfound success, Eve—whose career relies on her ability to write her emotions into song—grows increasingly skeptical of the app’s impact on genuine connection. Their relationship becomes the ultimate modern experiment: How do you fall and stay in love in the digital age?
“Love Is an Algorithm is my new novel about hapless New Yorkers trying to find love and create art in a world so full of dating apps, social media, and AI. I hope readers find it funny, warm, and weird. Thank you for reading <3” – Laura
EXCERPT
Eve keeps mentioning this party she’s going to go to, a friend’s thing, and Danny can’t tell whether it’s an invitation or not. He doesn’t know why he can’t just ask her. “Is that an invitation?” he could say, or, “I can’t tell if you’re inviting me to this.” Better yet, he could just make other plans and pretend not to care. Alas! Danny is so bad at not caring. He keeps that Thursday evening open until the morning of the party, a morning after Eve has spent the night at his apartment, and she mentions, “You can probably come to this party if you want to.”
It’s Eve’s and Shannon’s college friends. When they enter the apartment, someone calls Eve’s name, and Eve immediately disappears.
“Please be my shepherd,” Danny tells Shannon.
“For sure, man,” Shannon says. “I will expect you to baa at regular intervals, though.”
Danny spends the evening being superchill about whether or not he is near Eve at any given moment. On the bright side, everyone he meets is like, “Ooooh, the Danny?” Downside, Eve seems thrilled that Danny can fend for himself and as such does very little fending.
At one point, he and Shannon are comparing the relative merits of different types of tortilla chips when she goes, “No fucking way,” and then, “Hang on, stay here.”
She bobs and weaves to the other side of the party. Danny sees Eve standing near the door looking shocked as a needlessly tall man stoops to hug her. Though Danny has met him before, his most recent acquaintance with this man is in the annals of Eve’s social media.
This is Fletcher.
Fletcher has entered the party.
Danny is nothing like Fletcher, whose mother was a professional tennis player and whose father is the CEO of a performance cycling company. Fletcher has the face of an AI vampire and grew up summering in Monaco. Danny, on the other hand, is the prototypical boy next door. Danny is the guy whose defining characteristic is
proximity.
Danny has listened to all of ski rat, which will be released in its entirety in two weeks’ time. Eve has spoken extensively of her decision to be more vulnerable on this album—more specific in the stories and feelings in each song. Which means that Danny knows a lot about Fletcher. Perhaps more than one should know about the recent ex of the person they’re seeing. The lyric “naked in a river” seems to stick in Danny’s brain.
The chips taste too strongly of lime. Danny keeps eating them because he wants to look like he has purpose. He absolutely does not want to keep standing there watching Eve talk to Fletcher, but he also doesn’t want to abandon Eve.
When Shannon reaches them, Fletcher laughs and stoops to pick her up off the ground in a hug. My man! Don’t go around lifting women! Shannon is also laughing, though, so that’s good. They all seem to be instantly engaged in a zany and high-energy conversation about someone they all know. Of course; they’ve all been friends for years. Danny wonders again whether Fletcher was at that bachelor/ette party. He eats three more chips. Would you believe it? They still taste too strongly of lime!
Danny goes to the bathroom, and when he comes back, Eve, Shannon, and Fletcher are gone. He lets out a long, slow breath and leans against the wall. It should not feel like this. A slow loop of the apartment, and no Eve. Finally, he finds her alone on the balcony.
“Oh, hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Do you want to head out? I’m kind of dead.”
They thank the host and Eve hugs Shannon. No sign of Fletcher.
Back on the street, Eve says, “That was so weird.”
“You didn’t know he was going to be here?”
“No. He was in town for some work thing, I guess.”
“And how are you feeling?”
Eve raises her hands overhead in a full-body shrug. “You know.”
But Danny doesn’t know. How could he know? Eve doesn’t tell him. And he doesn’t ask because he’s not sure he wants to push for the answer. Because sometimes, it seems like everything is perfect—like they are meant to be—but then other times, it seems like it has not been nearly long enough since Eve and Fletcher broke up, and Danny has no idea whether the thing between him and Eve is waxing or waning.
“I might actually just call it a night, if that’s okay,” Eve says. “I think I just need to, like—take a shower and be mopey.”
“Yeah, of course. Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you?”
“Aw,” Eve says, and she kisses him for just a moment. “Let’s hang out this weekend.”
Then she leaves.
What if he didn’t overthink this? That would be great. But that word, mopey. Why mopey? Mopey because she’s full of doubt and regret? Mopey because Fletcher said something that Danny should have asked about? How long does this feeling go on, the uncertainty of it all?
He presses the heel of his hand against his chest.
Is she or is she not the love of his life? Can he or can he not introduce her to his dad? Should he or should he not start telling people that this is the woman he’s going to marry—which makes for a very cute story if he ends up being right and a very pathetic gaffe if he ends up being wrong.
What he wants are odds. He wants a number to tell him he’s not insane.
On the subway the next morning, he’s so thoroughly inside his own head that he misses his stop and has to walk six blocks back to work, which is to say, Julian’s apartment, where Danny is so relieved Eve no longer lives.
Julian is working at the kitchen table when Danny arrives.
“I have an idea,” Danny says.
“The diner,” Julian says. “Breakfast burritos. Yes.”
“No. I was thinking we stop focusing on matching people and start focusing on people who are already in relationships.”
Julian looks up from his laptop. “Meaning?”
“You can’t retain your customers if all you offer are first dates. Once users are in a good relationship, we never see them again. So we pivot. We make something for people who want to optimize their relationships. We make something that tells them objectively whether or not their relationship is working.”
Julian lowers his laptop screen halfway, hesitates, then shuts it fully. He lays his palms flat against the top with his thumb on the Apple logo, and the links of his watch clink against the titanium. He stands and starts to smile (braces, $5000), and steps forward to reveal white Adidas ($180) and a Guess button-up ($98) and shorts that do not resemble swimwear. He says, “Let’s go.”
