Book Review: The One

I’ve read another John Marrs book, this time, his 2016 novel, The One, about a DNA matching company, Match Your DNA, that purports to match people with their soulmates at the DNA level based upon a gene the scientist and company-founder, Ellie, discovered, guaranteeing everlasting love. You can’t deny chemistry! Or can you …

Marrs’ book reminds me of other modern books I’ve read in the last few years, including Marrs’ other book I just read, The Passengers, in terms of its structure. Each relatively short chapter is told from the perspective of another character, albeit in this case, while their stories all revolve around the DNA matching, of course, they aren’t connected to each otherwise.

In The One, the story of DNA matching is told through five characters in London:

Mandy, a late 30s divorcee, who is looking for love and to mother her own children, but feels the pressure from her family to do exactly that; Christopher, a serial killer (yes) on a quest to reach 30 kills and be more infamous than Jack the Ripper; Jade, someone I didn’t think had much of a defined character other than hating her parents, her life in London, and having a temper; Nick, who doesn’t believe in Match Your DNA and just wants to marry the seeming love of his life, Sally; and as mentioned, Match Your DNA founder, Ellie, who is now seeking her own match through her DNA in the form of Tim, a regular Joe type of a guy juxtaposed to her billionaire lifestyle.

The premise is a fine one, particularly this idea that the non-Matched would be looked down upon as unlikely to make it, and the turmoil brought about from those divorcing their non-Matched people to find their true Matches. So, I don’t think it’s a leap to think people would use something like Match Your DNA, if such a gene actually existed. But the slavish devotion to its credibility is a bit much. Primarily, my brain goes to, yeah, it has a billion users, but theoretically then, it’s not matching you with your real soul mate in the world, but your soulmate within the literal gene pool Match Your DNA possesses. Nonetheless, let’s go over how this all shakes out for our five characters.

• Mandy matches with Richard, who she learns is dead. Weirdly, though, she decides to have his baby from insemination of his sperm from a sperm bank at the behest of his … mother and sister, only to learn that Richard isn’t dead (he’s in a vegetative state), didn’t submit his DNA to Match Your DNA (his mother did), didn’t want kids, and oh, probably isn’t even his mother’s actual child (she’s mentally unwell, to say the least).
• Christopher, again, the serial killer, matches with Amy, a police officer. At first, Amy sees right through his psychopathic attempts to seem normal, calling his attempts to be romantic “cringe.” But then … she falls for him and that wise, sharp cop-minded character just disappears until the very end when she finally catches on to him being a killer (after he’d already killed another 18 women or something like that). Then, instead of turning him into the police, she almost talks herself, and is talked by him, into loving him because they “matched.” However, she kills him the same way he killed his victims with a cheese garrote. That seemed totally out-of-character, but her main motive is she doesn’t want to face the embarrassment of being “matched” with a serial killer as a police officer.
• Jade matches with someone that not only is half-way around the world in Australia, but as she comes to find out upon maxing out her credit cards to fly there, he’s dying of lymphoma. Oh, and she’s not really in love with him like she expected, but she marries him anyway to be selfless. And it turns out, she was actually matched with the dying man’s brother, Mark, and they end up together after the brother dies.
• Nick and Sally decide to send in their DNA, despite Nick’s ambivalence toward it all, only for Nick to be matched with … a guy named Alex. To say I was rolling my eyes a bit at that would be an understatement. I get, again, that these folks believe highly in the chemistry and science of Match Your DNA, but even as Nick quips, by 26, you would know if you’re gay or not. He’s never had any desires for a man, but suddenly because he’s purportedly chemically matched with Alex, he’s going to start an affair (that leads to sexual contact, of course!) and live happily ever-after with Alex in New Zealand raising a child that Sally had in an affair of her own?! Yes, all that happens. Sally dies of an aneurysm, too.
• Finally, in the biggest twist of the book, Ellie discovers that Tim is actually Matthew, the son of a former employee of Ellie’s, who Ellie used in the early days of Match Your DNA (by used, I mean, she took the woman’s DNA without her consent to build up the company’s DNA database). But that’s only the first twist; the second twist is that Matthew infected her network and “mis-matched” upwards of 2 million people. So, it’s possible all the aforementioned characters have been mis-matched. Upon hearing this, after a lengthy ethical debate about Match Your DNA and Matthew accusing Ellie of playing God and having a God complex (I think Ellie is right, ethically-speaking, that whatever people do with the Match information doesn’t make her culpable, but as a businessperson, Ellie is obviously shady), Ellie kills Matthew in a fit of rage. Which just so happened to be captured on webcam and sent out for all the world to see. Not only does the world then know about the “mis-matches,” but they literally witnessed the murder (which gets compared to the redundant footage of the Twin Towers falling … yeah). Weirdly, the book ends before we learn the verdict of whether Ellie, who some began comparing to a victim of emotional abuse, would be found guilty or not of the murder.

Whatever comes of that verdict, that makes two murders in the book, Amy’s and Ellie’s, motivated by the same instinct: the self-preservation stemming from the embarrassment at secrets getting out. That was rather lazy, in my estimation. My criticism of that, the Amy character’s wittiness and bluntness disappearing over a large chunk of the book from the original Amy we were introduced to, and my skepticism that someone could just sort of will themselves into being gay, I obviously devoured a 500-page book over the course of two days for a reason. It was interesting and written in a fast-paced way with short chapters to keep the story moving, and when concerning myself with the fates of five different characters, that especially made for fast reading. At times, I found myself oscillating my interest from Mandy’s story, to Christopher’s, to Jade’s, to Nick’s, and to Ellie’s, which is a good thing. Ultimately, I found Ellie the most interesting as the founder of the company and what would transpire there, but still, I was able to glom onto the others as well.

I didn’t like Marrs’ effort here as much as The Passengers, which for the record, does make mention of Match Your DNA (so, I guess a few years later, it’s still going!), just because of those aforementioned issues I had with characterization and plotting, but I think most readers would still enjoy, The One, as I ultimately did.