Amy Lea’s Something Like Fate considers the role of fate in our lives – do we choose our destiny, or is it pre-decided?

Lo Zhao-Jensen is part of an extended Chinese-American family where she is strongly influenced by her mother’s sisters and all the family lore. All the women have a gift of psychic ability – except Lo. She’s a bit adrift, unhappy at university, uncertain of what her life will look like, desperate to find her soulmate (she’s nineteen!) and has some unresolved grief about her mother. There’s a Chinese tradition that female family members will have a vision that shows their soulmate, and if they don’t heed it, they will have a life of tragedy and/or misery. This drives the plot, as nearly all of Lo’s decisions are influenced by her vision.

Teller Owens is a great friend of Lo’s. They met when they worked at the local cinema and spent a platonic summer together. Teller is organised and uptight, and so kind, but he and Lo went off to different colleges and have only stayed sporadically in touch.

Lo has a month’s holiday to Italy planned and at the last minute, she persuades Teller to go with her and they backpack through Italy: Venice, Rome, Florence, the Amalfi Coast. There are museums and food and sunshine and Vespas, and it’s everything Lo could want. During the trip, Lo has a vision that fellow backpacker Caleb is her soulmate. He comes and goes, and all the while Teller is there (right there!) and Lo is denying her complicated feelings. She and Teller do have a (closed door) one night stand – which made it harder for me to understand her whole fascination with Caleb.

There’s plenty of detail about Italy, and while it’s evocative and delicious, it’s also touristy and superficial.

Meanwhile, Lo is still holding tight to her belief in the fate/soulmate thing – encouraged by her aunts – even as she tries to find herself. I was reminded of how young Lo is; she relies on phoning home to unload all her issues to her friends and family, to the point that her dad and an aunt come over for the last stage of the trip. The aunts promote the idea of the vision – and nobody encourages Lo to decide her own fate.

I didn’t love how predictable it all is. As much as anticipation is a part of romance, I stopped caring about how Lo and Teller would get together. Lo takes far too long to wake up to herself – I’d been there already for ages. I have some quibbles, too, about some of the Italian detail – locals with names like Noreen, Louis and Robert feel odd – and there are many missed opportunities to infuse the text with the ‘real’ Italy.

Amy Lea’s Influencer series has much more charm, though it’s not NA/YA. My final grade indicates that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to adult/AAR readers, but it might appeal to older teens.