Is there one perfect person for all of us, or do we choose who we love and make that work (or not)? This is the question at the heart of Maurene Goo’s highly anticipated first adult romance, One & Only.

Cass (Cassia) Park adores her biking club. It combines her BFF, Marcela, being outside enjoying the Los Angeles weather, and burning some calories. What’s not to love? Simple answer: embarrassing accidents. Which is exactly what happens one fine Saturday as the group is pedalling beside the LA river and Cass’s sudden braking has her tumbling tail over teakettle down a small slope. A kindly, incredibly handsome stranger introduces himself as Ellis, calls 911, and distracts her from her painful wrist and throbbing head till the ambulance arrives. Cass (weakly) calls her thanks as the paramedics load her into their vehicle and whisk her away to the hospital. She assumes that will be the last she sees of the guy, but she couldn’t be more wrong.

When he shows up at her work, One & Only matchmaking service, she agrees to join Ellis for a quick coffee. Their fun, flirty banter could easily turn into a deeper connection, but Cass makes it clear that won’t be happening. She will be turning forty in the next few weeks and isn’t looking for the kind of fun-and-done relationship that Ellis – twelve years her junior – is doubtless angling for. He takes her refusal with good grace, and they part as friends.

Putting a kibosh on sexy times with Ellis was harder than Cass made it look, but she’s protecting a secret. She’s magic. For centuries, from their roots in the villages of Korea to their plush, celebrity-endorsed office in Beverly Hills, the women of the Park family have found their clients’ present-day matches by reading their past lives. In these visions, the ladies can see a red thread connecting the two “fateds”, and a name wondrously appears on a scrap of paper, giving the agency the intended’s contemporary identity. A bit of computer sleuthing and arranged meetings do the rest of the work. This magical mystery is why One & Only Matchmaking has a 100% guarantee of success – destiny always informs their matches. Cass had her reading done years ago and knows who her one and only is a man named Daniel Nam. It’s been a long wait for him to show up in her life, but Cass has determinedly stuck to one-night or only slightly longer stands while holding out for her destined man. Her mother fell in love with and married a guy who was not her fated one in a fit of rebellion, and the end results were tragic.

Luck is not being a lady to Cass, however. She winds up encountering Ellis again, and this time her self-control isn’t strong enough to keep her from enjoying a sex-fueled, fun-filled weekend with him. Dropping him off at work while heading out on a planned vacation to honor the anniversary of her mother’s death adds a rotten cherry to Cass’s already angsty moment, though. She meets Ellis’s boss, Daniel Nam-Watson.

Now her life is a truly tangled-up mess. Ellis wants more than a weekend, and Cass just wants to get on with the serious business of fulfilling her life’s purpose of having a daughter with Daniel to carry on the Park family legacy. As she maneuvers the extremely complex dance of ditching Ellis and getting together with Daniel, she finds herself asking the same question her mother must have asked years ago – should she allow fate to dictate the terms of her existence or should she decide for herself what she wants?

The description for this novel isn’t one that would typically draw me, since it contains a lot of my ‘don’ts’. As in, I don’t like love triangles. I’m not wild about the women’s fiction/romance hybrids that permeate the market; I’m not big on fated mates. But the buzz around the book was so intense, I was intrigued enough to pick it up. And for the most part, it deserves the hype.

The author does a great job of pulling the reader into the story. I was wanted to know who Cass would choose and what the author would be saying about life with that choice. I was engaged by the hints of a mystery surrounding the relationship between Cass’s parents, and wondered just what we would learn. And I was delighted by the whole magical surrealism angle. Ms. Goo does a great job of gently weaving it into the story without using it as a prop to hold up the plot.

I also just loved the writer’s prose style. So often, a good premise doesn’t reach its full potential because of problems with the writing, but that isn’t the case here. I was immersed in this story; everyone feels so real, and the scenes are painted so clearly that the narrative is vivid and consuming.

The story also requires that the reader be impressed with two different romances, and that mostly happens. Each of Cass’s beaus have their own charms, each has inside jokes with her, and each brings out unique, positive aspects of her personality. I loved how the text highlighted the way everyone we know sees a different, but equally legitimate side of us – like a prism, our harmonious whole contains many different colors made up of granddaughter, best friend, niece, boss, cool aunt, etc.

Few books are perfect, and this one has some flaws that keep it from DIK status. Cass is obliviously selfish. Completely focused on what she wants and how she feels, she is careless with both Daniel’s and Ellis’s feelings. Her ticking biological clock is given as an excuse for that, but it doesn’t negate her coming across as privileged and spoiled. Daniel and Ellis are both more like accessories in the story than fully formed individuals. We don’t get to see their negative or hurting sides; we mostly just see a picture of how they would fit into Cass’s world. She winds up coming between two guys who have a strong mentor/mentee relationship, and I would have liked to see the impact of that explored more.

Cass is also a true believer in her own magic, to the point where she doesn’t see glaring holes in the logic of it. Arranged marriages, high childhood mortality rates, sexual mores forbidding relationships between people for reasons ranging from class differences to racial prejudices – all of these things would mean that the history she sees (and the reality of the present) show that not everyone can be with The One. As lovely as the concept is, her insistence on the 100% guaranteed happiness made me too aware of the ways love can go wrong. The text does eventually explore this, but I would have liked that to have come a bit earlier and for it to have been a bit more fleshed out.

Those are quibbles, though. One & Only is a fun, quick, riveting contemporary that I would definitely recommend.